The  HUMANITIES  in  the 
EDUCATION  of  the  FUTURE 

AND  OTHER  ADDRESSES 
AND  PAPERS 


BY 

WILLIAM  BAXTER  OWEN,  PH.D.,  LITT.D. 

Professor  of  the  Latin  Language  and  Literature 
in  Lafayette  College 


BOSTON 

SHERMAN,  FRENCH  &  COMPANY 
1912 


\\ 


O 


• 


COPYRIGHT,  1912 
SHERMAN,  FRENCH  6s  COMPANY 


PREFACE 

The  addresses  and  papers  that  make  up  this 
volume  have,  with  two  or  three  exceptions  ap- 
peared in  print  in  various  periodicals  and  publi- 
cations, and  are  now  brought  together  in  this 
more  permanent  form  partly  in  recognition  of 
the  occasions  on  which  they  were  delivered,  and 
partly  because  of  the  steady  and  even  increasing 
public  interest  in  the  topics  discussed.  The  ad- 
dresses are  educational,  memorial,  literary,  post- 
prandial, chapel  talks, — glimpses  of  college  life 
on  its  better  side;  in  fact  the  atmosphere 
throughout  is  that  of  the  college,  and  in  par- 
ticular of  the  vigorous  small  college,  to  which 
we  must  still  look  for  the  most  decisive  and  hope- 
ful influences  in  education. 

Easton,  Pa,  W.  B.  0. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I     THE  HUMANITIES  IN  THE  EDUCATION  OP 

THE  FUTURE 1 

An  Address  Delivered  at  the 
Chambersburg  Academy  on  its  Cen- 
tennial Celebration. 

II     THE  VALUE  OF  DISCIPLINE  IN  EDUCA- 
TION        17 

Delivered  at  the  Commencement 
of  Franklin  and  Marshall  college. 

Ill     PROFESSIONAL  STUDY  IN  COLLEGE    .      .      32 

IV     THE  TEACHING  OF  THE  CLASSICS:    ARE 
WE  SACRIFICING  THE  HUMANISTIC  TO 

THE  LINGUISTIC? 38 

Read  before  the  Ninth  Annual 
Convention  of  the  Association  of 
Colleges  and  Preparatory  Schools 
of  the  Middle  States  and  Mary- 
land. 

V     HIGH  SCHOOL  TRAINING  IN  ITS  BEAR- 
ING UPON  Civic  INTEGRITY     ...     49 

An  Address  before  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Educational  Association. 

VI     EFFICIENCY  THE  AIM  OF  EDUCATION     .      58 

Delivered  at  the  Annual  Banquet 
of  the  New  York  Alumni  Associa- 
tion. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

VII     SIMPLIFIED  SPELLING 65 

An  Address  before  the  Anthro- 
pological Society  of  Washington, 
D.  C.,  in  a  Symposium  on  the 
Question,  "Is  Simplified  Spelling 
Feasible?" 

VIII     WILLIAM     CASSIDAY     CATTELL,     D.D., 

LL.D 73 

Founders'  Day  Address. 

IX     PROFESSOR  FRANCIS  A.  MARCH,  LL.D., 

L.H.D 86 

Memorial  Address  at  Lafayette 
College. 

X     PROFESSOR  MARCH     . .          ....    100 

Address  at  the  Annual  Banquet 
of  the  New  York  Alumni  Associa- 
tion. 

XI     INDELICACY  IN   LITERATURE       .      .      .111 
XII     BOOKS  TO  BE  READ  BEFORE  GRADUATION  122 

XIII     COLLEGE  FRATERNITIES 129 

Address  before  the  Grand  Chap- 
ter of  the  Zeta  Psi  Fraternity  of 
North  America,  meeting  at  La- 
fayette College. 

XIV     TOWN  AND  GOWN 137 

Contributed  to  the  "  Lafayette," 
on  the  Proposal  that  the  Seniors 
wear  Oxford  Hats. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XV     THE  EASY  CHAIR 143 

XVI     SOME  FREAKS  OF  COLLEGE  SENTIMENT    148 

XVII     WHAT  THE  PEWS  REQUIRE  OF  THE  PUL- 
PIT          ...    154 

At  a  Dinner  Given  to  the  Lehigh 
Presbytery,  Easton,  Pa. 

XVIII     EZEKIEL'S  WATCHMAN 158 

To  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  with  Special 
Reference  to  Students  for  the  Min- 
istry. 

XIX     How    SHALL    I    GIVE    THEE    UP,   EPH- 

RAIM? 164 

XX     THE  NOISE  OF  THEM  THAT  SING     .      .175 


THE  HUMANITIES  IN  THE  EDUCATION 
OF  THE  FUTURE 

A  hundred  years  of  life  and  growth  means  a 
good  deal,  but  in  an  institution  of  this  kind,  chiefly 
it  should  mean  a  readiness  to  enter  confidently 
upon  a  second  century  of  its  growth.  To  a  single 
phase  of  this  outlook  and  your  readiness  for  it, 
I  would  briefly  direct  your  thoughts. 

We  hear  much  of  the  new  education  and  of 
educational  reforms  as  they  apply  to  courses  of 
liberal  training;  that  the  courses  must  be  mod- 
ernized. I  shall  best  exhibit  the  motive  of  these 
agitations  by  noting  a  few  facts  about  the  prog- 
ress of  science  in  these  days.  In  any  general 
consideration  of  this  progress  we  are  at  once  con- 
fronted by  three  lines  of  remark:  1st,  The  In- 
crease of  Knowledge;  2d,  The  Question  of  Its 
Dissemination,  and  3d,  The  Question  of  Its  Uses. 
— These  lines  of  thought  are  familiar,  but  it  is  the 
educational  corollary  in  which  we  are  now  con- 
cerned. 

First,  as  to  the  acquisition  of  new  knowledge, 
the  accumulation  of  the  facts  of  nature,  by  scien- 
tific workers,  the  last  fifty  years  has  witnessed  an 


2          HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

amazing  advance.  It  is  enough  for  me  to  men- 
tion it.  To  enlarge  upon  it  might  well  consume 
all  my  time  and  more.  I  pass  then  to  say  in 
the  second  place,  that  the  acquisition  of  knowl- 
edge is  enormously  in  advance  of  its  distribution. 
This  great  fund  of  truth  is  known  after  all  to 
but  few — a  mere  handful  of  the  race.  It  is  at 
centers  of  learning,  in  the  publications  of  learned 
societies,  in  the  laboratories  of  workers.  The 
highly  educated  classes  are  vastly  in  the  minority, 
but  even  these  cannot  possibly  go  over  the  ground 
of  the  sciences,  or  do  more  than  get  the  most 
general  idea  of  them;  while  as  to  the  masses,  it 
is  literally  true  that  primitive  ignorance  still 
clings  to  the  skirts  of  culture,  groveling  under 
the  very  shadow  of  libraries  and  colleges.  I  am 
not  speaking  now  of  illiteracy,  or  of  those  forms 
of  ignorance  that  are  detected  by  school  exami- 
nations. My  point  is,  that  if  tests  of  another 
kind  were  applied — tests  that  would  show  the  ad- 
justment of  popular  intelligence  to  the  funda- 
mental truths  of  common  life,  masses  of  people 
would  be  found  surprisingly  ignorant  of  the 
world  as  it  is  known  to  science.  The  general 
intelligence  is  but  dimly  adjusted  to  the  real 
truths  of  the  world.  To  the  masses  the 
earth  is  still  flat  and  motionless,  the  moon 
might  as  well  be  made  of  green  cheese.  To 
numbers  larger  than  you  would  suppose  this  new 
knowledge  of  nature  remains  a  sealed  book. 
In  the  third  place,  the  acquisition  of  knowledge 


HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION          3 

is  enormously  in  advance  of  its  practical  applica- 
tions. True,  much  has  been  done  in  the  way  of 
material  progress — in  mechanical  appliances,  in 
labor-saving  and  time-saving  machines,  in  pro- 
gressive inventions  and  discoveries — so  that  Car-* 
lyle  could  say,  "How  have  cunning  workmen  in 
all  crafts,  with  their  cunning  head  and  right  hand, 
turned  the  four  elements  to  be  their  ministers, 
yoking  the  winds  to  their  sea-chariot,  making  the 
very  stars  their  nautical  time-piece."  And  since 
Carlyle's  time,  what  with  steam  and  now  this 
weird  and  nimble  sister  of  the  four  elements — 
electricity — this  progress  has  been  a  rare  theme 
for  the  swelling  periods  of  the  orator.  But  this 
picture  has  another  side.  This  progress  is  rela- 
tive and  recent.  Its  benefits  come  to  us  in  such 
questionable  shape,  with  such  obvious  crudities 
and  inequalities,  that  our  condition  now  as  com- 
pared with  what  would  be  possible  were  all  that  is 
known  suitably  applied,  is  as  primitive  rudeness 
to  our  present  arts  and  industries. 

Of  course  we  have  to  note,  from  this  utilitarian 
point  of  view,  that  there  is  a  vast  amount  of  sci- 
entific investigation  which  has  not  as  yet  any 
practical  outlook.  There  are  vast  areas  of  un- 
digested knowledge  which  have  not  yet  emerged 
into  the  field  of  utility.  Yet  it  remains  true,  as 
Bacon  said,  that  all  science  should  be  a  rich  store- 
house for  the  glory  of  God  and  the  relief  of  man's 
estate.  All  science.  We  have  no  right  to  assume 
that  any  branch,  or  any  item  of  knowledge  is  use- 


4          HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

less.  Every  serious  inquiry  into  the  principles 
and  forces  of  nature  may  justly  arouse  the  ex- 
pectation of  benefit.  We  have  also  to  note  that 
the  most  complete  control  and  use  of  natural  law 
by  man  is  at  present  in  the  simpler  sciences,  while 
the  more  difficult  and  complicated  sciences  promise 
the  most  valuable  results.  Astronomy  is  simple, 
but  of  slight  practical  use.  Physics,  somewhat 
more  complicated  and  vastly  more  useful,  for  in 
this  region  of  natural  law  all  the  mechanic  arts 
spring  up.  Chemistry  is  still  more  complex,  and 
here  is  a  field  of  utility  which  is  only  now  opening 
to  us  its  untold  treasures.  Biology  and  sociology 
are  complex  in  the  highest  degree.  Organic  life 
and  growth,  e.  g.,  present  immense  difficulties, 
and  their  mastery  will  some  day  bring  inestimable 
benefits  to  man.  We  can  readily  see  how  impor- 
tant and  practical  these  fields  of  knowledge  will 
be,  when  we  remember  how  much  we  depend  even 
upon  our  superficial  pursuit  of  such  arts  as  animal 
domestication,  and  that  economic  cultivation  of 
plants  which  we  call  agriculture  and  horticulture. 
We  are  using  physical  forces  very  freely,  and 
directing  them  scientifically ;  we  are  not  giving 
scientific  direction  to  vital,  mental  and  social 
forces.  The  postponement  of  their  application  is 
due  to  obvious  hindrances,  among  them  this  one 
which  I  now  emphasize,  viz:  the  meager  dissemi- 
nation of  the  knowedge  to  the  people  at  large. 

Then  as  to  the  mass  of  applied  knowledge,  even 
in  the  field  of  physics,  the  greater  part  of  it  is 


HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION  5 

applied  in  so  limited  a  way  that  the  benefits  are 
confined  to  comparatively  few.  Take  so  simple 
a  matter  as  ventilation — what  an  advance  we 
should  have  if  all  that  scientific  doctors  know  were 
universally  applied !  In  the  arts  of  life,  where  we 
get  our  comfort,  and  where  our  wants  are  sup- 
plied— in  building,  plumbing,  farming,  mining, 
cooking — we  live  and  work  on  a  plane  far  below 
what  is  possible  in  the  present  state  of  knowledge. 

Economic  waste  is  appalling — not  merely  the 
waste  of  prodigal  extravagance,  or  of  ruinous 
competition,  but  the  waste  by  fire,  by  flood,  by 
forest  denudation — some  people  know  better;  the 
masses  do  not.  Then  in  matters  far  more  serious 
and  vital — in  the  matter  of  food — of  biological 
laws  involved  in  reproduction,  of  sanitation  and 
the  prevention  of  diseases — there  are  suggestions 
trembling  on  the  lips  of  science  which  would  be  of 
vital  importance  to  the  world. 

This  failure  of  science  to  relieve  the  needs  of 
life  is  of  course  most  conspicuous  in  the  condition 
of  the  masses.  In  the  English  higher  classes, 
e.  g.,  18  per  cent,  of  infants  die  before  reaching 
the  age  of  five  years ;  in  the  lower  classes  55  per 
cent !  Death  comes  to  all  alike  at  some  time,  but 
hurries  to  the  cabin  and  drags  his  slow  approach 
to  the  palace  as  though  he  had  lead  in  his  heels. 
During  the  last  few  months  20,000,000  subjects 
of  the  richest  empire  on  the  globe  have  perished 
by  starvation.  Here,  of  course,  we  come  up  to 
the  hard  fact  of  social  inequality.  The  poor 


6          HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

cannot  afford  the  products  of  skill  and  invention. 
They  cannot  even  get  the  necessaries  of  life.  But 
I  am  only  speaking  of  the  fact.  The  fact  re- 
mains that  the  material  benefits  of  progress  are 
not  diffused.  While  this  very  starvation  has  been 
dragging  its  horrors  along,  that  very  empire  has 
expended,  directly  or  indirectly,  $100,000,000 
upon  the  pomp  of  a  royal  jubilee.  We  raise 
wheat — plenty  of  it — by  improved  methods,  we 
grind  it  by  improved  machinery,  we  transport  it 
by  improved  applications  of  motive  power,  and 
there  is  plenty  of  money  to  do  all  this — but  there 
is  the  starvation  and  there  i$  the  jubilee.  The 
material  benefits  of  progress  are  not  diffused. 
The  further  fact  that  their  diffusion  widens,  not 
in  proportion  to  the  increase  of  knowledge,  but  as 
they  tell  us,  in  proportion  to  the  increments  of 
its  dissemination  suggests  that  this  great  riddle 
of  suffering  and  social  wrongs  may  yet  meet  with 
its  solution  in  universal  education. 

The  logical  conclusion  of  all  this  is  of  course, 
educate!  Hasten  the  radiation  of  knowledge  to 
the  masses !  Bring  science  with  its  benediction 
to  the  masses.  What  we  want  is  to  rapidly  as- 
similate the  results  of  scientific  research,  and  pass 
them  on  to  the  arts,  to  legislation,  and  to  the 
molding  of  popular  opinions  and  modes  of 
thought. 

Of  course,  when  we  speak  of  the  universal  dif- 
fusion of  all  knowledge,  we  are  talking  in  a  way 
that  is  plainly  visionary ;  but  while  it  is  impossible 


HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION  7 

that  all  men  should  know  all  things,  there  are  cer- 
tain classes  of  natural  knowledge,  and,  if  you 
please,  certain  specific  lines  of  information  with 
which  the  welfare  of  society  requires  every  indi- 
vidual to  be  familiar. 

It  would  also  seem  that  we  have  advanced 
far  enough  to  be  able  to  give  more  definite  form  to 
our  ideals  of  education,  by  determining  what  these 
general  and  particular  classes  of  knowledge  are. 
That  would  fix  the  ideal  curriculum  of  school  in- 
struction. Text-books  should  then  be  prepared 
by  acknowledged  masters  in  each  department, 
methods  of  instruction  should  be  sought  that  will 
secure  the  utmost  thoroughness  in  the  inculcation 
of  cardinal  principles,  then  such  reforms  as  will 
facilitate  the  most  wearisome  processes  of  pri- 
mary education,  and  save  time  for  other  studies. 

I  do  not  think  that  the  motive  underlying  the 
appeal  for  modern  education  could  be  more  fairly 
exhibited  than  in  such  an  outline  as  I  have  given. 
Many  of  you  have  doubtless  already  noticed  the 
fundamental  error  to  which  I  now  call  your  atten- 
tion, viz :  that  in  this  outline  I  have  had  in  view 
but  one  phase  of  educational  results — those  look- 
ing toward  material  progress.  This  is  the  fatal 
error  of  those  educational  theories  that  are  based 
upon  the  requirements  of  material  growth.  From 
that  point  of  view  education  is  chiefly,  if  not 
solely,  the  education  of  information,  information 
about  nature,  the  facts,  laws  and  forces  of  nature. 
Not  a  word  about  the  training  of  manhood.  But 


8  HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

one  may  have  a  world  of  information  about  na- 
ture, and  yet  be  without  skill  or  taste  or  tact, 
without  judgment,  without  culture,  without  con- 
science, without  character.  There  is  a  skill  in 
doing  that  is  good,  a  breadth  of  information  that 
is  good  too,  but  the  supreme  trait  that  determines 
the  quality  of  a  civilization  is  what  its  men  and 
women  are,  not  what  they  know.  The  greatest 
truths  and  the  greatest  influences  in  the  world  are 
those  which  are  above  nature.  The  greatest 
factor  in  this  world  of  ours  is  the  human  factor ; 
and  the  humanities,  so-called  through  all  these 
twenty  centuries,  have  to  do  with  the  intellectual, 
moral  and  spiritual  life  of  the  homo. 

Let  me  confirm  this  by  the  testimony  of  two 
witnesses  whose  authority  will  not  be  questioned. 
Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  says : 

"The  truth  is,  that  the  knowledge  of  external  na- 
ture, and  the  sciences  which  that  knowledge  requires 
or  includes,  are  not  the  great  or  frequent  business  of 
the  human  mind.  Whether  we  provide  for  action  or 
conversation,  whether  we  wish  to  be  useful  or  pleasing^ 
the  first  requisite  is  the  religious  and  moral  knowl- 
edge of  right  and  wrong;  the  next  is  an  acquaintance 
with  the  history  of  mankind,  and  with  those  examples 
which  may  be  said  to  embody  truth,  and  prove  by 
events  the  reasonableness  of  opinions." 

And  Professor  Robert  H.  Thurston  says: 
"The  mission  of  science  is  the  promotion  of  the  wel- 


HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION          9 

fare,  material  and  spiritual,  physical  and  intellectual 
of  the  human  race  .  .  .  the  use  and  the  aim 
of  scientific  inquiry  are  to  be  sought  in  the  region  be- 
yond and  above  the  material  world  to  which  those 
studies  are  confined." 

The  master  spirits  even  of  science  are  contin- 
ually telling  us  that  we  must  look  up  and  away 
from  the  material  trappings  of  our  study. 

Experience  furnishes  as  yet  no  alternative,  and 
I  see  no  escape  from  the  conclusion  that  history, 
literature  and  the  philosophies — mental  and  moral 
— must  be  heavily  drawn  upon  to  furnish  the  ma- 
terials of  liberal  education.  I  speak  of  literature 
as  embodying  the  noblest  part  of  human  history — 
the  thoughts  of  great  and  gifted  men.  I  make 
no  narrower  distinction  at  present  about  the  lan- 
guages, ancient  or  modern;  but  the  masterpieces 
as  we  have  them  in  the  world's  best  books,  must 
remain  the  master  instruments  of  an  education 
that  is  to  give  liberal  training. 

And  now  as  to  the  value  and  uses  of  liberal 
education :  it  is  one  of  the  discouragements  of  col- 
lege work  that  the  education  we  try  to  give  there 
is  felt  to  be  of  little  use  except  for  lawyers,  doc- 
tors and  preachers,  and,  perhaps,  for  teachers. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  training  a  man 
has  received  tells  to  his  advantage  wherever  he 
may  be  placed ;  and  even  practical  fitness  for 
many  kinds  of  work  requires  a  broader  basis  of 
preparation  than  we  are  apt  to  suppose.  Mr. 


10        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

Dana  said  that  to  report  a  prize  fight,  a  spelling 
match  or  a  ball  game,  he  had  rather  have  a  fellow 
who  has  read  the  Ajax  of  Sophocles,  who  has  read 
Tacitus,  and  can  scan  every  ode  of  Horace,  than 
one  who  has  never  had  these  advantages.  That 
represents  fitness  for  the  most  practical  features 
of  journalism. 

I  would  not  turn  away  from  the  practical,  but 
would  take  a  still  larger  view  of  it,  and  insist  that 
there  is  no  duty  or  labor  which  we  may  be  called 
upon  to  perform,  into  which  we  may  not  inject,  as 
an  element  of  our  fitness  for  it,  the  utmost  meas- 
ure of  the  manhood  or  womanhood  that  we  pos- 
sess. Just  as  a  teacher  cannot  teach  too  well,  or 
a  preacher  preach  too  well,  or  a  lawyer  plead  too 
well,  so  there  is  a  sense  in  which  the  life  and  work 
of  the  carpenter,  the  engineer,  the  farmer  and  the 
trader,  make  drafts  upon  them  which  require  bet- 
ter than  their  best.  They  cannot  be  too  diligent, 
too  persevering,  too  accurate,  too  sagacious,  too 
manly.  Did  you  ever  know  a  man  doing  a  work 
which  required  skill,  which  he  did  too  skillfully? 
that  required  watchfulness  in  which  he  was  too 
vigilant?  that  required  fidelity  in  which  he  was 
too  faithful?  Now  the  higher  training  of  good 
schools  is  to  develop  these  very  traits. 

Besides  it  is  not  simply  a  man's  daily  work;  it 
is  his  equipment  to  meet  as  worthily  as  he  can 
the  various  relations  in  which  he  must  live — his 
relations  in  the  family,  his  relations  in  the  com- 
munity as  neighbor  and  friend,  his  relations  in 


HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION        11 

the  state  as  a  citizen.  In  view  of  these  many 
and  varied  relationships,  what  work  a  man  can 
do  is  a  fair  question  of  course.  But  a  greater 
one  is,  what  kind  of  man  is  he?  With  what  in- 
telligence and  judgment  to  note  and  decide?  with 
what  capacities  for  growth  in  the  graces  of  per- 
sonal life?  with  what  spirit  does  he  stand  before 
tasks  that  require  labor  not  only,  but  tact  and 
patience?  How  does  he  stand  in  circumstances 
which  test  integrity?  with  what  taste  for  the  en- 
joyment of  the  beautiful?  and  with  what  capac- 
ities for  the  exercise  of  charity  and  benevolence 
toward  others? 

Success,  if  we  measure  it  by  income  and  for- 
tune, is  a  paltry  achievement  in  comparison  with 
the  better  success  measured  on  the  scale  of  intel- 
ligence and  character. 

I  am  well  aware  that  the  more  delicate  values 
of  liberal  education,  unfortunately,  cannot  be  ap- 
preciated by  those  who  have  not  experienced  them. 
That  feeling  of  fellowship  with  the  learned,  the 
freedom  to  swing  in  the  larger  circle  of  great 
men's  thinking,  the  constant  expansion  of  the 
horizon  of  intelligence,  the  acquisition  of  the  les- 
sons of  history — the  mores  hominum,  the  play  of 
the  universal  conscience  in  man,  the  convictions 
of  our  race — to  know  what  qualities  and  what 
principles  have  been  sovereign  in  human  life;  the 
scholar  sets  at  a  high  value  the  freedom  and  in- 
sight which  he  gains  in  these  directions,  for  they 
become  a  part  of  his  mental  furnishing.  These 


12        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

lessons  are  stamped  not  upon  the  memory,  but 
upon  the  man,  upon  character,  determining 
not  only  capacity  in  various  directions,  but  his 
tastes,  and  the  quality  and  style  of  his  thinking. 

Among  the  more  obvious  and  appreciable  bene- 
fits, besides  that  general  intellectual  training 
which  gives  tact  and  judgment,  readiness  and 
accuracy,  there  is  the  effect  of  this  training  in 
giving  command  of  the  mother  tongue.  Clearness 
of  thought  and  facility  and  accuracy  in  expres- 
sion are  the  special  gifts  of  linguistic  study;  nor 
can  any  exercise  in  English  composition  be  equal 
to  the  discipline  of  transferring  thought  from 
language  to  language.  Words  must  be  so  care- 
fully selected  and  weighed;  there  must  be  a  new 
balance  in  the  clauses  to  preserve  emphasis  if  not 
idiom ;  shades  of  meaning  must  be  recognized  and 
transferred  with  all  the  delicacy  and  refinement 
which  the  student  can  command  or  acquire. 
Here  is  room  for  every  shade  of  excellence,  and 
the  honest  translator  is  from  day  to  day  making 
progress  in  ease  and  force  and  accuracy  of  ex- 
pression. 

And  now,  as  ours  should  be  a  forward  look,  let 
me  predict  that  the  humanities  in  education  will 
be  not  less,  but  more  important  in  the  coming 
century,  and  for  the  following  very  practical  rea- 
son, in  addition  to  the  considerations  already  men- 
tioned, which  give  them  a  permanent  value :  The 
natural  progress  of  scientific  study  to  the  more 
complex  ranges  of  truth,  will  at  length  bring  the 


HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION        13 

interest  of  science  itself  into  the  region  of  hu- 
manism. I  have  already  indicated  in  a  general 
way  this  progress  from  the  simpler  to  the  more 
complex  sciences — from  physics  to  sociology. 
We  have  had  centuries  of  empiricism  mingled  with 
more  or  less  of  superstition  in  every  field — in 
physics,  in  chemistry,  in  biology,  and  in  the  arts, 
which  are  based  upon  these  studies,  in  mining,  in 
metallurgy,  in  medicine;  we  have  now  had  about 
a  century  of  science,  truly  so-called,  with  the  em- 
phasis shifting  upward  in  the  scale,  and  now  for 
thirty  years  pretty  definitely  placed  upon  biology. 
Many  of  you  will  remember  that  twenty-five  years 
ago  the  attention  of  thinking  men  was  concen- 
trated upon  evolution,  and  that  in  its  biological 
phases  the  descent  of  man  was  its  culminating 
interest.  This  phase  is  passing,  and  already  so- 
ciology  looms  big  upon  the  horizon  and  sociology 
promises  to  be  the  great  field  for  scientific  re- 
search and  experiment  for  the  next  few  years, 
possibly  for  the  next  century.  We  shall  study 
history  and  literature  and  philosophy  and  reli- 
gion as  we  never  have  studied  them  before,  not 
for  culture  merely,  but  for  the  facts,  for  scientific 
induction,  to  construct  and  confirm  our  theories 
of  social  order.  We  shall  have,  as  in  fact  we  al- 
ready have,  an  enormous  amount  of  theorizing, 
of  speculation  and  experiment  upon  finance  and 
big  business,  taxation,  the  tariff,  and  upon  the 
suggestions  of  socialism,  but  the  practical  out- 
come, beyond  these  measures  that  come  as  a  re- 


14        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

suit  of  the  swinging  of  the  political  pendulum 
from  period  to  period,  will  be  a  more  thorough 
and  systematic  study  of  the  true  social  forces. 
We  shall  be  doing  in  government  what  we  have 
long  been  doing  in  physics,  viz.,  using  the  forces 
of  nature,  directing  them  into  channels  of  ad- 
vantage and  working  out  by  them  results  which 
can  be  definitely  foreseen.  Already  many  of  our 
social  problems  are  coming  to  the  schools  for  their 
solution.  It  has  long  been  so  with  problems  turn- 
ing upon  physics  and  chemistry,  problems  in 
manufacture,  in  agriculture,  in  transportation 
and  the  application  of  motive  power;  but  now  we 
are  taking  the  temperance  question  to  the  schools ; 
the  schools  are  contributing  an  important  factor 
to  the  settlement  of  the  woman  question,  by  show- 
ing that  women  can  teach  as  well  as  men  and  in 
many  cases  can  learn  better.  The  great  problem 
of  citizenship  and  fitness  for  the  ballot  depends 
for  its  solution  upon  what  the  schools  are  doing 
for  men. 

Then  in  matters  of  economic  theory  and  meas- 
ures of  public  policy,  the  universities  and  colleges 
are  beginning  to  investigate  and  to  inculcate  doc- 
trine on  their  own  account  and  college  presidents 
and  professors  are  becoming  a  factor  in  political 
issues.  Half  our  college  students  in  these  days 
are  diligent  readers  upon  public  questions,  with 
opinions  of  their  own,  ample,  original,  refreshing, 
and,  perhaps,  the  schools  may  yet  show  us  how  to 
deal  with  the  trusts  and  with  anarchy,  how  to 


HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION        15 

settle  the  question  of  wages  and  rent  and  the 
deeper  problems  of  industrial  economy.  I  wish 
here  to  call  your  special  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  center  of  scientific  interest  is  advancing  into 
this  field  where  the  materials  are,  in  large  part, 
to  be  derived  from  studies  which  we  call  the  hu- 
manities. I  do  not  mean  merely  the  growth  of 
the  science  of  language.  There  are  indications 
of  the  rise  of  a  new  and  nobler  enthusiasm  for 
these  studies,  springing  from  the  love  of  men. 
And  when  an  enthusiasm  for  humanity  shall  su- 
persede this  overwhelming  enthusiasm  for  nature, 
when  we  study  the  social  forces  and  the  modes  of 
applying  them  to  secure  the  best  results  in  the 
condition  of  men — as  we  now  study  the  facts  and 
forces  of  nature — we  shall  find  that  the  products 
of  human  thought,  and  the  history  of  human  in- 
stitutions have  a  value  which  as  yet  even  the 
wisest  have  but  suspected. 

We  may  improve  our  methods  of  study,  our 
methods  of  teaching.  That  we  have  been  doing 
all  along,  so  that  classical  study  is  not  what  it 
was  three  hundred  years  ago,  or  even  what  it  was 
fifty  years  ago ;  we  may  adapt  our  studies  to  these 
new  purposes,  discarding  whatever  is  useless, 
whatever  is  dead  and  moldy ;  though  it  is  a  grow- 
ing surprise  to  me — the  modernness  of  the  ancient 
thinkers,  the  practical  value  of  their  thoughts 
and  experiences,  the  pertinence  of  their  insight. 
A  hand-book  for  lawyers  not  only,  but  one  for 
merchants  might  well  be  made  up  from  the  pages 


16        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

of  Cicero.  But  if  for  educational  purposes  Bacon 
is  better  than  Cicero,  if  Boileau  and  Dr.  Johnson 
are  better  than  Horace  and  Juvenal,  if  Dante 
and  Goethe  are  better  than  Homer  and  Euripides, 
if  John  Stuart  Mill  is  better  than  Aristotle,  we 
can  easily  make  that  exchange.  It  will  only  be 
replacing  a  book  by  a  better  book;  but  the  study 
of  man — that  we  must  have — the  best  in  man. 
Not  his  bones,  not  his  muscles,  not  even  the  tis- 
sues of  his  nerves  and  brain,  or  the  measurement 
of  his  facial  angle,  interesting  as  that  is,  but  the 
knowledge  of  what  he  does  and  says,  his  wisdom, 
the  supreme  flights  of  his  masterly  thinking. 


II 


THE  VALUE  OF  DISCIPLINE  IN 
EDUCATION 

I  bring1  words  of  hearty  greeting  to  Franklin 
and  Marshall  College  as  one  of  the  strongholds 
of  sound  liberal  training — progressive  certainly, 
with  free  and  ready  adjustment  to  new  condi- 
tions, but  in  these  adjustments,  not  yielding  so 
much  to  the  demand,  e.  g.,  for  vocational  studies 
as  to  thwart  the  main  purposes  of  liberal  train- 
ing. Colleges  that  have  done  that  are  now  find- 
ing that  they  must  come  back;  Franklin  and 
Marshall  need  take  no  backward  step. 

We  do  not  object  to  the  word  "practical"  if 
it  is  used  in  its  larger  meanings,  but  to  "com- 
mercialize"— if  that  term  may  be  applied  to  our 
tendencies  in  education,  we  can  hardly  resist  the 
impression  of  debasement,  for  in  education  we  are 
dealing  with  the  human  spirit.  "Standardize"  is 
a  good  word,  newly  applied,  and  has  an  exact 
and  scientific  ring,  but  if  it  is  intended  to  suggest 
to  us  an  exact  analogy  between  processes  of  edu- 
cation in  a  college  and  processes  of  manufacture 
in  a  mill,  where  your  raw  material  is  put  in  and 

your  finished  product  comes  out;  and  if  there  is 

17 


18        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

to  be  a  strict  commercial  accounting  of  hours  of 
study,  of  recitation,  and  of  lecture,  and  an  eco- 
nomic scrutiny  of  the  use  of  floor  space  and  all 
appliances,  so  that  the  ledger  will  show  for  every 
dollar  of  expenditure  a  dollar  of  return  and  a 
little  more  for  profit,  then  that  use  of  "standard- 
ization" will  somewhat  rasp  our  finer  sensibilities 
— mainly  because  in  education  we  are  dealing  with 
values  which  do  not  yield  themselves  to  measure- 
ment on  the  scale  of  dollars. 

I  hope  I  do  not  caricature  that  very  able  and 
thoughtful  document,  Bulletin  No.  5  of  the  Car- 
negie Foundation  for  the  Advancement  of  Edu- 
cation. I  do  not  mean  to  misrepresent  it ;  but 
the  very  terms  in  which  the  idea  is  expressed  are 
such  that  the  statement  of  the  analogy  sounds 
like  caricature.  Raw  material,  e.  g.t  what  is  it  in 
this  "industry"  of  education  but  the  members  of 
the  Freshman  class?  Should  we  so  designate 
them  in  the  serious  language  of  science?  The 
flippant  Sophomore  may  so  name  them,  and  they 
must  endure  it  I  suppose;  but  they  do  so  with  a 
shrug  of  resentment  even  in  that  case.  Then 
"finished  product."  Your  graduating  Senior, 
now  becoming  keenly  aware  that  instead  of  being 
"finished"  he  is  only  ready  to  begin,  will  blush 
at  the  phrase  and  wonder  whether  it  is  science  or 
satire. 

In  mere  knowledge  very  likely  we  are  on  the 
lowest  level  of  educational  results,  and  even  knowl- 
edge, while  we  can  test  the  possessor  of  it  by  ex- 


DISCIPLINE  IN  EDUCATION          19 

aminations,  we  cannot  make  any  inventory  of  its 
value  in  terms  of  dollars. 

Knowledge  of  course  is  important,  but  rela-1 
tively  the  least  important  element  of  education.) 

"Knowledge  is  power"  we  say,  but  we  know 
very  well  that  it  is  not  power  unless  under  special 
conditions. 

When  it  comes  to  that  point  where  it  utilizes 
the  forces  of  nature,  and  masters  the  conditions 
of  supplying  the  needs  of  life,  we  may  call  it 
power ;  when  in  the  processes  of  its  handling  there 
emerges  some  kind  of  capacity,  then  it  is  power; 
when  it  reaches  that  point  where  it  can  be  trans- 
muted into  character,  then  it  is  power;  but  the 
mere  knowledge  of  facts  as  a  personal  accomplish- 
ment is  not  power,  and  has  in  itself  little  value 
of  any  kind. 

Now  this  passing  of  knowledge  into  something! 
finer  by  means  of  reflection,  experience,  the  fa- 1 
miliar  handling  of  knowledge  under  circumstances 
such  that  it  will  yield  up  its  best  fruits — this 
transmutation  of  mere  knowledge  into  discern- 
ment, accuracy,  judgment,  prudence,  wisdom — 
shrewdness,  duplicity,  knavery,  etc.,  is  what 
chiefly  concerns  us  in  education.  We  note  differ- 
ences here.  To  take  a  single  contrast — wisdom — 
shrewdness.  Wisdom — that  lifts  a  man  to  larger 
outlook  in  life,  ennobling  his  whole  nature,  quali- 
fying him  therefore  to  choose  ends  that  may  be 
pursued  with  safety  and  honor.  Shrewdness — 
the  keen  edge  of  expediency  to  note  advantages 


20        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

under  given  circumstances,  with  sharp  outlook  for 
the  main  chance,  and  that  qualifies  a  man  there- 
fore to  devise  means  to  any  end,  however  wisely 
or  unwisely  that  end  may  have  been  chosen. 
Your  shrewd  man  may  pervert  the  good  and  play 
tricks  with  conscience  and  with  motives.  You 
cannot  trust  him  to  apply  your  preachments  of 
righteousness  and  mercy.  He  will  apply  every 
precept  so  as  to  place  the  duty  on  the  other  man 
and  the  benefit  upon  himself.  Incidentally  here, 
it  were  well  to  have  knowledge  ripen  toward  wis- 
dom rather  than  toward  shrewdness. 

Then    there     are     processes     in     the     getting 
and    handling   of   knowledge   that    give    practice 
in    thinking    and    growth    in    that    power.     But 
here      we      are      in      regions      where      the      ad- 
vances     of      growth      are     not      visible.     If     a 
man    gain    ten    pounds    avoirdupois,    the    scales 
will    show   that    to    the    minutest    fraction    of    an 
ounce,  but  there  are  no  visible  units  of  thought 
growth,  or  any  tangible  units  in  the  texture  of 
character,   of  whose   increase  one  is   immediately 
aware.     A  lad  may  pass  an  hour  or  two,  under 
instruction,  in  learning  how  to  adjust  some  deli- 
cate instrument,  as  a  theodolite  or  a  microscope; 
and  may  easily  see  in  that  manipulation  his  rapid 
advance   in   skill   of  eye   and   hand;   but,   in   the* 
knowledge  and  the  exercises  that  give  discipline! 
of  intelligence,  and  that  deepen  moral  conviction,L 
the  results  are  such  as  not  to  be  immediately  ob-  • 
vious.     The  man  with  the  scales  can  detect  no  dif- 


DISCIPLINE  IN  EDUCATION          21 

ference.  The  man  with  the  ledger  will  be  puzzled 
to  know  how  much  credit  to  give,  or  whether  he 
shall  give  any. 

The  student  himself  will  be  ten  years  in  finding 
out  what  the  study  of  Socrates  in  a  certain  class- 
room contributed  to  his  moral  fiber,  and  may  be 
still  longer  in  realizing  the  value  to  him,  in  the 
development  of  effective  thinking,  of  his  work  in 
Trigonometry  and  in  Cicero.  After  a  long  time 
he  will  begin  to  see  it,  and  may  go  back  at  some 
commencement  season  and  tell  his  Professor  that 
such  work  was  the  most  valuable  part  of  his  edu- 
cation, though  at  the  time  it  seemed  to  him  useless 
and  irksome. 

The  education  of  the  utilities  has  therefore 
popularly  an  enormous  advantage  over  the  edu- 
cation of  culture  because  it  presents  practical  and 
obvious  values.  Culture  is  the  refinement  of  in-j 
telligence.  It  will  not  be  overlooked  by  the  care- 
ful educator,  though  it  may  easily  be  overlooked 
by  throngs  of  students. 

If  then  there  be  a  great  rush  to  vocational  and 
utilitarian  studies,  on  the  part  of  those  who  might 
have  and  should  have  a  broader  training  for  their 
work,  that  does  not  prove  the  superior  value  of 
vocational  studies ;  it  only  suggests  a  possible 
lack  of  insight  and  mature  judgment  on  the  part 
of  those  who  so  choose. 

These  considerations  throw  a  welcome  light  on 
the  subject  of  free  electives.  That  a  boy  may 
study  what  he  pleases  in  college  suggests  a  peril- 


22         HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

ous  extreme.  Suppose  it  should  please  him  to 
study  nothing!  You  may  have  noticed  that  logic 
has  a  quaint  habit  of  playing  tricks  when  thus 
pushed  to  extremes. 

Peace!  The  world  sighs  for  it,  prays  for  it, 
groans  under  the  horrors  and  the  burdens  of  war- 
fare. How  then  shall  we  have  peace?  Why, 
build  war  ships  so  big,  make  cannon  so  mighty, 
projectiles  so  irresistible,  make  defensive  armor  so 
impenetrable,  maintain  armies  in  every  nation  so 
large  and  ready  that  war  will  be  impossible ! 

If  one  bathe  once  a  year,  one  is  clean  at  long 
intervals;  once  a  week,  one  is  clean  much  oftener; 
every  day,  twice  a  day,  clean  all  the  time.  Then 
the  trick — if  one  is  clean  all  the  time  why  need 
one  bathe  at  all? 

Of  the  many  reasons  against  free  election,  that 
against  its  principle  and  working  should  be  suf- 
ficient— the  liability  to  error  in  precocious  spe- 
cialization, subjects  if  left  to  the  personal  choice 
of  students  being  so  often  selected  upon  grounds 
of  superficial  or  even  capricious  interest.  It  is 
more  important  to  know  what  a  boy  needs  in  edu- 
cation than  what  he  likes,  and  what  he  needs  is 
more  likely  to  be  thoroughly  understood  by  those 
who  have  insight  and  experience  and  an  enduring 
earnestness  and  sincerity  in  the  work  of  educa- 
tion. 

What  he  really  needs  is  discipline  of  thought. 
Note  two  or  three  elementary  stages  of  this  disci- 
pline— very  simply,  without  any  garnishing  of 


DISCIPLINE  IN  EDUCATION          23 

psychological  or  pedagogical  technicalities — first 
to  promote  readiness  of  thought,  ease  and  speed 
in  its  common  movements.  Not  whimsical,  invol- 
untary thinking;  that  accomplishes  so  little. 
What  we  must  have  is  consecutive  thinking  under 
the  control  of  the  will. 

To  hold  in  check  the  capricious  impulses  of 
thought — to  keep  it  active  and  also  to  hold  the 
currents  of  it  in  definite  channels — this  is  one  of 
the  supreme  values  of  school  work,  cultivating 
the  power  of  attention,  habits  of  study,  accom- 
plished by  personal  supervision,  but  also  and 
mainly  through  class  drill,  making  thought  obedi- 
ent to  the  call  of  questions. 

A  class,  say,  of  fifteen  pupils,  plied  with  rapid 
questions  for  thirty  minutes,  a  hundred  questions 
within  that  time — perhaps  twice  that  many,  for 
they  are  easy,  the  easier  the  better,  for  the  pur- 
pose is  not  to  test  knowledge  but  to  train) 
thought;  and  the  ideal  situation  is  that  every 
pupil  will  answer  every  question,  not  knowing 
who  will  be  called  upon  to  answer  it  aloud. 

Second,  promptness  in  certain  processes  of  ex-  ^ 
act  reasoning.  This  we  get  in  the  mathematics, 
from  mental  Arithmetic  to  the  Calculus.  Third, 
accuracy  in  the  observation  of  simple  facts — to 
let  simple  facts  lie  clear  and  true  upon  the  mind 
as  they  may  lie  upon  the  eye.  Fourth,  coming  to 
correct  conclusions  from  facts.  This  involves  not 
only  clear  perception  of  the  facts,  but  also  the 
recognition  of  their  relations  to  each  other. 


24        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

This  is  reasoning,  a  valuable  quality.  Without 
it  we  make  mistakes  and  are  failures.  Indeed 
life's  failures  come  mainly  from  this  source.  Cer- 
tainly there  are  other  failures — moral  failures, 
that  strew  the  ways  of  life  with  wrecks  that  chal- 
lenge our  tears.  Of  these  we  do  not  now  speak, 
but  rather  of  our  failure  to  do  our  common  work. 
This  comes  from  two  sources — lack  of  force,  which , 
we  often  mistakenly  call  laziness,  and  lack  of 
judgment. 

Here  we  are  distinctly  within  the  realm  of  the 
practical.  In  this  gift  of  judgment  we  touch  the* 
highest  form  of  intellectual  endowment.  The 
man,  who,  in  any  given  situation  knows  just  what 
to  do  is  the  man  of  the  hour.  The  man,  who,  in 
any  difficult  situation  can  instantly  solve  the  situ- 
ation by  a  stroke  of  insight  that  goes  straight 
to  its  heart  is  the  great  man — in  invention  Edi- 
son, in  finance  Morgan,  in  war  and  state  craft 
Julius  Caesar. 

These  are  eminent  instances,  but  the  quality  of 
which  we  are  speaking  is  universally  valuable 
through  all  the  grades  of  work — the  maid  in  your 
kitchen  wants  it,  your  builder,  your  teamster — as 
much  in  his  sphere  as  the  president  of  your  bank 
or  the  governor  of  your  state,  and  the  work  is 
as  fatally  vitiated  by  its  absence  in  the  one  case 
as  in  the  other. 

I  am  of  course,  well  aware  that  the  school  can- 
not impart  judgment;  that  at  its  foundation  is 
mother  wit,  that  fundamental  stuff  in  men  which 


DISCIPLINE  IN  EDUCATION          25 

we  call  natural  ability.  But  the  school  can  help 
in  two  ways :  It  opens  to  us  a  large  fund  of 
recorded  experience.  Eight  or  ten  years  of 
school  life  gives  us  some  sort  of  access  to  the  ex- 
perience of  three  or  four  thousand  years,  and 
what  we  know  about  life,  and  how  to  do  things 
comes  to  us  largely  in  this  way. 

But  chiefly,  the  school  helps  in  the  development 
of  such  natural  gifts  as  we  may  have.  Without 
development  they  will  be  of  little  use,  so  the  school 
undertakes  to  guide  and  train  us  in  judgment — 
by  various  methods  doubtless  and  on  various  sub- 
jects, but  I  wish  to  emphasize  the  value  of  that 
training  which  comes  from  dealing  with  thoughts 
rather  than  with  things. 

Reason  must  grow  upon  its  own  product — that 
which  expresses  thought.  In  language  we  have 
the  very  implements  of  reason,  and  to  learn  its 
free  use  we  must  make  ourselves  masters  of  the 
processes  of  speech  because  these  are  the  imple- 
ments of  reason. 

We  can  hardly  overestimate  the  value  of  lan- 
guage study  in  promoting  growth  in  intelligence. 
Our  earliest  efforts  in  thinking  are  determined 
by  the  meanings  which  we  gradually  learn  to  at- 
tach to  the  words  that  we  hear.  We  widen  our 
thinking  by  getting  new  words  and  by  going 
deeper  into  the  significance  of  those  we  know. 
From  first  to  last  we  are  led  on  in  pathways  that 
are  marked  out  by  speech.  In  school  or  out  of 
school  we  are  drawing  upon  the  wealth  which  has 


26        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

accumulated  in  speech.  Our  very  words  are 
charged  with  a  kind  of  vitality — with  the  heart 
and  thinking  of  the  men  who  have  used  them. 
When  a  nation  has  been  speaking  and  writing  and 
printing  a  word  for  centuries,  coloring  it  with  the 
events  of  their  public  and  personal  life,  expressing 
by  it  their  temper,  their  courtesy,  the  results  of 
their  thinking,  pouring  into  it  their  convictions 
and  their  passions — you  can  easily  see  what  a 
delicate  and  marvelous  instrument  we  may  have 
in  a  common  word,  as  Shakespeare  or  Milton  or 
Webster  or  Lincoln  may  use  it.  It  should  be  the 
purpose  of  educational  training  to  bring  us  into 
the  fullest  possible  control  of  this  stored-up 
wealth. 

So  far  on  the  side  of  facts,  regarding  words 
as  facts. 

Then  the  handling  of  the  elements  of  speech  in 
their  relations  is  an  exercise  of  great  value  in 
the  development  of  intelligence.  The  elements  of 
speech  are  the  implements  of  reason,  and  the  proc- 
esses of  speech  are  the  methods  of  reason;  so  it 
is  the  patient  handling  of  these  elements  in  their 
relations  that  develops  reasoning  power.  It  is 
by  working  upon  sentences,  getting  their  mean- 
ing, and  exercises  in  their  formation,  that  the 
crude  insights  of  the  untrained  mind  are  brought 
forward  to  something  like  sagacity. 

This  seems  so  elementary  that  one  hesitates  to 
speak  of  it  in  such  a  presence  as  this ;  yet  in  such 
a  presence  as  this  it  is  likely  to  be  best  understood 


DISCIPLINE  IN  EDUCATION         27 

that  what  most  boys  and  girls  need  on  entering 
college  is  the  power  to  grasp  clearly  the  meaning 
of  a  paragraph  of  classic  text. 

The  relations  of  words  in  a  clause,  or  of  clauses 
to  each  other  are  not  arbitrary  or  accidental,  but 
are  the  essential  relations  of  logic;  so  that  in 
dealing  with  them  day  in  and  day  out,  through 
much  of  our  school  life,  we  get  the  habit  of  trac- 
ing relationship  and  the  instinct  of  feeling  it. 
This  habit  and  this  instinct  lie  at  the  foundations 
of  reasoning  power.  These  give  readiness  and 
ripeness  to  the  mind  liberally  trained. 

I  have  no  occasion  at  present  to  insist  upon 
the  use  of  the  ancient  classics  as  the  master  ma- 
terials of  liberal  training.  Many  do  so  insist, 
and  under  other  circumstances  I  might  have  some- 
thing to  say  in  that  direction;  but  let  me  here 
admit  that,  except  for  convenience,  better  appli- 
ances and  immemorial  habit  in  education,  the  an- 
cient languages  have  no  monopoly  of  disciplinary 
value  over  the  modern ;  but  the  best  illustration 
of  our  present  point  will  be  found  in  a  language 
that  is  at  least  foreign. 

Note  the  progress  of  a  boy  in  mastering  a  new 
sentence  in  Goethe  or  Cicero  from  the  time  when 
it  is  almost  a  blank  to  the  time  when  its  meaning 
is  clear  to  him.  He  must  give  each  word  its 
proper  meaning;  must  fit  words  to  each  other 
which  are  in  the  sentence  remote ;  must  see  differ- 
ences between  forms  that  look  alike — often  resting 
a  decision  upon  a  minute  distinction. 


28        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

The  dictionary  may  give  a  dozen  meanings  for 
some  word,  and  that  will  open  new  vistas  of  sug- 
gestion and  probability  into  which  he  must  boldly 
walk  and  weigh  conflicting  claims.  He  must  con- 
stantly revise  previous  impressions  in  the  light 
of  fuller  knowledge.  The  main  purpose  of  all 
this,  in  the  stage  of  which  I  am  speaking,  is  dis- 
ciplinary, viz,  to  cultivate  those  very  activities  of 
reason  whose  supreme  value  is  put  to  the  test  in 
every  emergency  of  life  and  work.  I  need  not 
delay  you  to  go  through  the  steps  in  detail,  but 
only  to  remind  you  that  in  every  step  of  the  proc- 
ess he  has  been  grouping  facts  and  forming  judg- 
ments from  their  relations — in  a  crude  and  halt- 
ing way  of  course,  but  he  does  better  and  better 
as  he  goes  on.  There  is  material  here  for  proc- 
esses that  develop  the  finest  judgment,  just  as  in 
translation  there  is  room  for  the  best  that  the 
best  can  give — discernment,  precision,  delicacy  of 
insight,  felicity  of  phrase. 

Unconscious  growth  in  the  interpreting  intel- 
ligence is  the  fruit  of  this  drill.  It  ripens 
through  familiarity  with  linguistic  essentials,  but 
the  real  gain  is  in  the  keen  insights  of  intelligence, 
in  memory,  readiness,  accuracy,  and  in  the 
breadth  and  alertness  of  mental  action. 

The  time  is  too  brief  for  me  to  dwell  upon  the 
valuable  elements  of  training  derived  from  the 
study  of  science.  I  had  almost  said  equally  valu- 
able, but  it  is  different.  There  is  manipulation 
and  experiment,  and  these  make  knowledge  more 


DISCIPLINE  IN  EDUCATION         29 

definite  and  more  permanent.  There  is  training 
of  the  eye  and  hand  as  well  as  of  the  mind;  and 
at  times  great  use  and  culture  of  the  imagination. 
Still  we  make  little  gain  here  in  the  growth  of 
discriminating  thought — in  the  development  of 
the  interpreting  intelligence. 

If  we  pass  now  from  the  quality  of  discipline 
to  the  quality  of  the  truth  acquired,  we  shall  find 
that  the  claims  of  science  cannot  be  passed  over 
so  lightly.  Science  opens  to  us  the  world  of  na- 
ture and  we  rise  to  the  apprehension  of  it  in  pro- 
portion to  our  own  powers  of  expanding  thought. 

The  objects  we  study  draw  us  on  by  all  de- 
grees of  interest — on  every  hand  the  unknown  and 
its  challenge  to  the  instinct  of  investigation,  ob- 
jects curious,  useful,  objects  beautiful  and 
wonderful.  In  mathematics  not  only,  but  in  the 
study  of  types  and  laws  and  adaptations  in 
nature,  men  seem  to  swing  out  into  the  in- 
spiring task  of  tracing  the  very  thoughts 
of  God !  How  time  is  lengthened  for  us  when  we 
begin  to  realize  the  duration  of  geologic  ages ! 
How  space  deepens  when  we  observe  a  star  that 
presents  no  parallax  in  all  the  wide  swing  of  our 
annual  motion! 

It  would  seem  to  fall  in  with  such  a  course,  if, 
so  far  as  general  education  is  concerned,  students 
were  brought  forward  rapidly  to  the  results  of 
scientific  research,  with  only  enough  of  the  ele- 
mentary manipulation  and  experiment  to  make 
these  results  intelligible.  Some  of  the  sciences 


30        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

should  be  represented  in  the  required  part  of  a 
liberal  course,  not  with  exhaustive  and  technical 
study  of  detail,  but  with  adequate  introduction 
and  then  freedom  to  range  among  the  educating 
ideas  of  science. 

The  specialist,  of  course,  must  go  further — for 
purposes  of  research,  for  teaching,  and  for  the 
purposes  of  application  to  the  utilities  of  life. 

But  I  speak  now  for  the  majorities  of  average 
men,  and  insist  upon  the  educational  rather  than 
the  practical  values  of  science.  Fortunately  the 
masses  of  men  may  avail  themselves  of  these  prac- 
tical benefits  without  knowing  much  about  the 
sciences,  just  as  we  may  breathe  the  air  without 
knowing  of  its  constituent  gases,  or  be  nourished 
by  our  dinner  without  knowing  anything  about 
Dr.  Wiley's  analysis  of  the  foods,  or  anything  sci- 
entifically about  the  processes  of  nutrition.  One 
man  can  build  a  bridge  if  he  be  a  competent  en- 
gineer, millions  of  men  may  cross  it  without  be- 
ing engineers  at  all. 

Far  otherwise  is  it  with  culture,  with  character, 
and  the  ideals  of  life.  Every  man  must  get  these 
for  himself  or  go  without  them.  Elevating 
thoughts  are  of  no  use  to  us  until  they  have  passed 
into  the  processes  of  our  own  thinking.  And  so 
we  enter  the  glorious  realm  of  humane  interests — 
the  record  of  human  achievement  full  of  inspira- 
tion and  power;  the  noble  thoughts  of  great 
thinkers,  living  truths  wrought  out  of  human  ex- 
perience, and  all  shaped  into  beautiful  expressions 


DISCIPLINE  IN  EDUCATION          31 

under  the  creative  imagination  of  gifted  men — the 
humanities,  indeed,  the  inspiration  and  the  nutri- 
ment of  living  souls. 

To  this  inheritance  our  general  courses  should 
introduce  students.  We  should  lift  them  toward 
the  level  of  these  thinkers — not  for  selfish  refine- 
ment, but  for  the  symmetrical  development  of  the 
whole  mind  and  nature.  Refinement  indeed  it  is, 
but  refinement  of  power,  refinement  of  discrimina- 
tion in  matters  of  thought  and  judgment  and 
taste,  of  faith  and  morals,  of  every  interest  which 
the  student's  larger  life  may  compass. 


Ill 

PROFESSIONAL  STUDY  IN  COLLEGE 

The  influence  of  ennobling  study,  not  only  to 
develop  the  capacity  to  do  better  work,  but  to 
promote  a  readiness  to  hear  the  higher  calls  of 
duty,  suggests  the  question  whether  we  are  not,  in 
our  American  colleges,  in  some  danger  of  yield- 
ing up  the  liberal  courses  too  far  to  the  practical 
demands  of  special  professional  needs ;  and 
whether,  therefore,  we  are  not  to  be  congratulated 
that  so  many  institutions  of  high  standing  have 
been  slow  to  yield  to  these  demands. 

Dr.  Parkhurst,  in  a  recent  article  on  this  sub- 
ject, speaking  of  the  criticism  of  liberal  educa- 
tion, "prompted  by  the  utilitarian  spirit,"  says : 

"It  is  a  sad  pity  that  our  college  authorities  are  to 
such  a  degree  succumbing  to  this  shallow  skepticism, 
and  that  they  are  so  largely  allowing  the  idea  that  a 
college  is  an  institution  for  thie  comprehensive  up- 
building of  a  man,  to  be  replaced  by  the  idea  that  it 
is  a  sort  of  whetting  shop  where  dull  steel  can  be 
ground  to  an  edge,  or  a  kind  of  cabinet  shop  where  un- 
shaped  timber  can  be  worked  down  and  fitted  to  a  par- 
ticular niche  in  the  business  of  life." 

Lay  broad  and  deep  the  foundations.     We  all 


PROFESSIONAL  STUDY  33 

recognize  the  need  of  that — foundations  of  intel- 
lectual capacity,  of  knowledge  and  of  training; 
but  the  foundations  are  necessarily  narrowed  a 
little  if  the  student  begins  early  to  trim  off  some 
studies  and  select  others  that  have  or  seem  to  have 
a  more  direct  bearing  on  what  he  proposes  to  do 
in  the  world. 

There  may  be  some  compensation  in  a  gain  in 
fitness  for  special  work ;  but  the  power  to  do  spe- 
cific things  however  well,  forms  the  least  impor- 
tant part  of  a  professional  man's  career.  For 
the  right  use  even  of  his  professional  skill,  he  re- 
quires knowledge,  broad  training  and  those  ele- 
ments of  general  intelligence  and  character,  which 
qualify  him  to  think  well  and  act  well  under  many 
circumstances  where  his  special  skill  would  be  of 
little  avail. 

Besides,  in  narrowing  the  lines  of  preliminary 
study,  we  are  throwing  back  upon  academic  years 
the  conditions  of  practical  life,  and  are  in  some 
danger  of  lowering  our  standards.  In  the  region 
of  the  practical,  men  are  always  subject  to  a 
pressure  forcing  the"m  down  to  the  level  of  the  mo- 
tives of  common  business.  We  yield  only  too  read- 
ily to  that  pressure,  some  more  quickly  and  more 
completely  than  others,  but  on  the  whole  in  busi- 
ness the  commercial  motive  determines  the  moral 
level. 

The  liberal  courses  of  our  colleges  should  give 
young  men  a  stronger  and  a  deeper  hold  upon 
wholesome  moral  convictions.  What  the  world  of 


84        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

business  needs,  so  far  as  educated  men  are  con- 
cerned, is,  not  that  they  cultivate  earlier  the  apti- 
tudes of  competitive  business,  and  thus  earlier  di- 
rect their  energies  into  the  channels  of  self-seek- 
ing; but  that  they  come  to  their  work,  if  later, 
then  the  better  qualified  to  cherish  true  and  strong 
ideals  of  manly  living,  and  to  impart  a  leaven  of 
moral  earnestness  to  the  associations  of  later 
years. 

We  should  keep  the  period  of  education  as  free 
as  possible  from  any  mere  commercial  influence, 
and  as  sensitive  as  possible  to  those  elevating 
forces  which  come  from  noble  estimates  of  life. 

Such  estimates  we  derive  from  the  examples  and 
thoughts  of  great  and  gifted  men.  They  speak 
to  us  in  literature.  The  masterpieces  of  litera- 
ture are  perennial  fountains  of  inspiration  in  the 
essentials  of  manliness,  and  must  be  the  master 
instruments  of  liberal  education. 

To  such  influences  youth  quickly  responds. 
"Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy,"  says  the 
poet,  and  that  divine  radiance  still  lingers  about 
the  growing  boy ;  but  there  comes  a  time  when  the 
blood  cools,  and  the  mature  man  sees  the  celestial 
glory  "fade  into  the  light  of  common  day."  And 
that  is  well  so  far  as  it  is  mere  buoyancy  of  life ; 
but  so  far  as  this  spirit  of  youth  results  from  the 
vividness  of  moral  impressions,  so  far  as  his  work 
is  ideal  in  this — that  it  is  to  lie  within  the  lines 
of  certain  great  principles  as  integrity,  fidelty  to 
trust,  self-sacrifice,  so  far  as  the  glow  that  is  put 


PROFESSIONAL  STUDY  35 

upon  the  future  comes  from  a  heart  on  fire  with 
the  inspiration  of  these  principles,  this  spirit 
ought  not  to  be  quenched.  Rather  the  man  should 
be  more  earnest  than  the  boy,  his  zeal  and  en-, 
thusiasm  tempered  with  the  strength  of  added 
years. 

It  is  exactly  here  in  one  important  respect  that 
broad  educational  foundations  have  their  supreme 
value,  viz:  in  giving  solidity  and  permanence  to 
the  convictions  of  youth ;  and  here,  therefore,  that 
the  specializing  process  in  collegiate  study  will 
surely  be  found  to  be  short-sighted. 

Perhaps  the  -case  would  appear  stronger  if  it 
could  be  said 'that  even  for  money-making  the 
broadly  educated  man  has,  in  the  long  run,  the 
advantage  over  the  specialist;  and  perhaps  this 
might  be  truly  said,  but  I  prefer  to  take  the 
higher  ground  that  the  obligations  that  are  upon 
us  to  do  good  and  true  work  do  not  rest  upon  the 
money-getting  motive. 

Eminence  in  professional  life  involves  other  ele- 
ments of  success  than  such  as  are  measured  on 
the  scale  of  income.  The  educated  man  above  all 
others  should  be  the  one  to  appreciate  this  fact 
and  to  know  that  while  there  are  business  aspects 
of  work  in  any  profession,  they  are  of  least  im- 
portance in  determining  a  man's  rank  and  influ- 
ence, whether  in  his  professional  work  or  in  the 
many  relations  which  he  must  sustain  in  the  com- 
munity, as  citizen,  brother,  neighbor  and  friend. 

The  relief  of  suffering  and  the  elevation  of  hu- 


36        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

man  life  are  ends  which  bring  all  workers  to  one 
common  ground,  whatever  their  several  voca- 
tions ;  and  they  are  ends  to  secure  which  in  any 
degree  we  must  mainly  depend  upon  those  who 
work  in  the  professions.  Their  success  must, 
therefore,  be  measured  on  the  scale  of  their  service 
in  these  directions. 

In  journalism,  if  you  were  looking  for  the  daily 
papers  and  the  periodicals  that  do  most  to  pro- 
mote sound  intelligence,  and  that  exert  the  most 
wholesome  influence  on  home  life  and  public  senti- 
ment and  public  morals,  you  would  hardly  select 
those  that  are  making  the  most  money.  The 
same  is  emphatically  true  of  teaching  and  of 
preaching;  it  is  true  also  of  authorship.  The 
best  books  and  those  that  have  done  the  most  good 
are  not  the  ones  that  have  brought  the  largest 
financial  returns.  Nor  is  this  less  true  surely  in 
medicine  and  the  law. 

In  short  there  is  no  element  either  of  intelligence 
or  of  righteousness  which  a  man  may  sacrifice  for 
money-making  and  not  subject  himself  to  the  criti- 
cism of  having  made  a  bad  bargain,  his  oivn  criti- 
cism last  of  all  and  keenest  of  all. 

It  is  true,  a  course  of  study  in  literature,  phi- 
losophy, history,  science  and  mathematics,  may  not 
in  every  case  produce  the  results  in  intelligence 
and  manhood  which  we  are  here  contemplating, 
for  there  are  shallow  and  selfish  men  among  those 
who  have  passed  through  college  courses  as  well 
as  among  those  who  have  not;  but  such  studies 


PROFESSIONAL  STUDY  37 

faithfully  pursued  should  promote  and  do  ordi- 
narily promote  breadth  of  intelligence  and  depth 
of  character.  The  atmosphere  which  such  studies 
create  should  be  favorable  to  wholesome  and  last- 
ing convictions.  The  time  so  spent  is  by  no  means 
wasted,  for  these  studies  bring  many  rewards. 
The  one  which  we  are  here  chiefly  considering, 
however,  is  that  they  furnish  a  remedy  for  that 
narrowness  of  thought  and  life,  and  that  shallow- 
ness  of  professional  purpose  of  which  we  see  so 
many  instances. 


IV 

THE  TEACHING  OF  THE  CLASSICS 

ARE     WE     SACRIFICING     THE     HUMANISTIC     TO     THE 
LINGUISTIC  ? 

Some  difficulty  will  be  felt  by  those  of  us  who 
are  not  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  methods 
of  pursuing  the  classics  in  use  in  the  various  in- 
stitutions. Some  indication  as  to  the  subjects 
upon  which  linguistic  investigators  are  working 
may  be  derived  from  their  publications  in  the 
Journal  of  Philology,  the  Classical  Review,  their 
pamphlets,  and  the  papers  they  read  in  the  Philo- 
logical Association  and  other  kindred  societies. 
Judging  from  these,  we  get  the  impression  that 
the  aim  of  classical  study  is  an  exhaustive  pursuit 
of  certain  minute  and  special  lines  of  linguistic 
investigation.  The  field  is  full  of  busy  searchers, 
intent  and  eager,  turning  over  every  old  page  and 
every  monument  of  antiquity  that  contains  even 
a  fragment  of  a  record  of  human  speech,  in  the 
hope  of  finding  some  new  piece  of  evidence  on 
syntax,  accent,  or  some  phase  of  formal  criticism. 
For  such  purposes,  and  with  a  view  to  the  op- 
portunities it  may  offer  for  original  work,  a  text 

38 


TEACHING  OF  THE  CLASSICS        39 

will  often  be  valuable  in  proportion  to  its  obscurity 
and  its  real  insignificance.  The  Saturnian  verses 
of  Naevius  are  better  than  the  letters  of  Horace 
or  the  moral  essays  of  Cicero.  Such  study  is  car- 
ried to  amazing  heights  of  specialization  and  cer- 
tainly has  its  charms,  no  doubt  also  its  uses,  though 
it  can  hardly  be  regarded  as  very  productive  if  we 
have  in  mind  the  culture  of  the  humanities,  or  those 
practical  results  bearing  upon  human  progress,  of 
which  scholarship  should  never  lose  sight.  Such 
pursuits,  however,  do  not,  I  presume,  fairly  rep- 
resent the  work  of  the  class-room.  The  glimpse 
I  have  had  of  the  seminar  in  elective  and  post- 
graduate classes  in  some  of  our  institutions,  would 
suggest  that  a  taste  for  this  kind  of  linguistic 
work  is  cultivated.  Most  attention  is  given 
to  the  critical  side  of  exegesis,  in  which  respect 
the  seminar  has  apparently  undergone  a  remark- 
able change  as  compared  with  the  model  of  its 
great  originator,  Wolf,  who  gathered  about  him 
groups  of  enthusiastic  students,  and  with  the 
straightforward  procedure  of  a  clear-eyed  mas- 
ter, took  them  over  sentences  word  by  word, 
sounding  every  depth  of  meaning,  and  bringing 
to  bear  out  of  the  stores  of  his  own  knowledge 
weightier  matters  connected  with  the  larger  prin- 
ciples of  grammar  and  the  philosophy  of  speech. 
This  was  as  it  should  be. 

As  most  students  are  prepared,  we  have  to  de- 
vote a  good  deal  of  the  first  year  or  two  to  the 
linguistic  side.  It  must  be  drill,  severe  and  hard, 


40        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

and  all  must  go  through  it.  It  is  to  promote  fa- 
miliarity with  the  linguistic  essentials,  to  develop 
quickness  of  memory,  readiness,  accuracy,  insight 
and  alertness  of  mental  action.  It  must  not,  of 
course,  be  carried  on  mechanically  or  without 
proper  discrimination.  One  student  is  sensitive 
and  must  be  dealt  with  delicately;  another  is  dif- 
fident, and  must  have  confidence  imparted  to  him ; 
another  is  slow  and  must  be  handled  with  some 
patience ;  another  gets  into  an  ungoverned  haste, 
and  must  be  taught  to  reflect,  and  be  sure  of  these 
little  items  of  knowledge.  Apart  from  these  and 
similar  differences,  I  can  see  no  significance  in 
what  the  advocates  of  the  "new  education"  are 
urging  about  the  differentiation  of  pupils  on  the 
basis  of  psychology.  No  refinement  of  psycholog- 
ical analysis  you  can  apply  to  the  pupil  can  make 
anything  but  Latin  out  of  the  Latin.  The  Latin 
is  there.  It  is  sentences  made  up  of  words  that 
are  declined  and  conjugated  and  put  together  syn- 
tactically. Its  elements  must  be  mastered,  and 
the  linguistic  drill  here  proposed  is  good  for  all. 
A  portion  of  each  session  should  be  devoted  to 
the  repeated  application  of  the  grammar  to  the 
text  read — pronunciation  and  meters,  and  in  con- 
nection with  both  these,  quantity ;  sounds  and 
euphonic  changes ;  noun  stems  and  declension ; 
verb  stems  and  conjugation;  the  formation  and 
derivation  of  words,  and  syntax  all  the  time — this 
makes  a  good  outline  of  work  for  two  years.  It 
may,  however,  be  much  shortened  so  far  as  the 


TEACHING  OF  THE  CLASSICS        41 

drill  is  concerned  if  students  are  well  prepared  for 
college.  During  this  time — longer  or  shorter — 
a  good  deal  of  text  will  have  been  gone  over;  and 
a  good  many  linguistic  principles  made  familiar 
and  enforced. 

In  the  meantime,  further  valuable  results  may 
be  reached,  in  three  distinct  lines,  viz, — carrying 
forward  the  mastery  of  the  language  as  an  instru- 
ment of  thought,  so  that  the  student  and  the 
author  may  come  together  with  as  little  hindrance 
as  possible ;  secondly,  cultivating  accuracy  and 
habits  of  investigation,  and  dealing  with  linguistic 
details  by  processes  of  observation  and  reasoning 
that  will  develop  the  scientific  habit  of  mind ;  and 
thirdly,  that  cultivation  in  general  which  litera- 
ture imparts,  awakening  the  susceptibility  to  its 
humanizing  influence.  The  student  is  all  the  time 
broadening  the  way  to  a  better  knowledge  of  the 
mental  and  spiritual  life  of  the  people  whose  lit- 
erature he  is  reading.  Later  collegiate  work  in  the 
class-room  may  aim  more  exclusively  at  results 
in  these  three  directions,  or,  if  you  please  mainly 
at  the  last,  culture.  Even  in  this  case,  however, 
there  will  be  an  advantage  so  far  as  method  is 
concerned,  in  dealing  with  details,  in  giving  a  close 
and  careful  scrutiny  to  words, — not  only  their  ar- 
rangement, for  emphasis  and  rhythm,  not  only  the 
allusions,  figures  of  speech,  etc.,  that  may  be 
found  in  them,  but  the  shades  of  meaning  with 
which  they  are  used.  Careful  discrimination  in 
this  matter  is  one  of  the  most  valuable  gifts  of 


42        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

classical  study;  students  are  ordinarily  so  apt  to 
pass  over  words  with  a  vague  and  imperfect  idea 
of  their  meaning.  This  difficulty  confronts  teach- 
ers of  English  most  of  all.  I  remember  a  paper 
on  the  study  of  English  read  before  this  associa- 
tion some  years  ago,  by  Professor  March,  in 
which,  speaking  of  the  talk  about  reading  Latin 
and  Greek  as  we  do  English,  he  said,  "There 
ought  to  be  more  talk  about  learning  to  read  Eng- 
lish as  we  do  Greek." 

It  should  be  said  further  that  in  the  study  of 
grammatical  elements  there  may  be  a  gradation 
of  quality  such  as  to  adapt  it  to  the  capacity  of 
the  most  advanced  students,  leading  up,  in  fact, 
to  the  profoundest  and  most  important  questions 
of  linguistic  science.  Euphonic  laws,  for  ex- 
ample, may  be  based  on  the  physiology  of  speech ; 
the  study  of  nouns,  adjectives  and  verbs  may  lead 
on  to  the  origin  and  history  of  declension  and  con- 
jugation; it  is  a  further  and  legitimate  pursuit 
of  syntax  to  base  the  rules  on  principles  of 
thought ;  then  it  is  an  advanced  phase  of  rhetorical 
and  historical  interpretation  to  apply  the  ma- 
turer  scholarly  judgment  to  a  text  and  determine 
its  authenticity — the  ripest  and  noblest  fruits  of 
study. 

Such  criticism  has  its  aesthetic  as  well  as  its 
doctrinal  and  formal  side — a  point  to  be  noted  in 
connection  with  the  pursuit  of  classic  literature 
for  its  humanizing  influence.  In  every  stage  of 
study  in  the  classics  we  should  be  awake  to  im- 


TEACHING  OF  THE  CLASSICS       43 

pressions  of  the  beautiful  and  teach  students  to  be 
so.  This  process  has  its  difficulties.  To  subject 
any  work  of  art  to  that  analytic  treatment  which 
brings  the  elements  of  its  beauty  to  light  and 
makes  them  appreciable  as  elements  of  beauty  is 
no  easy  task;  partly,  perhaps,  because  there  is  no 
theory  of  beauty  upon  which  we  are  agreed,  by 
the  application  of  which,  such  analytic  treatment 
may  be  realized. 

Probably  it  will  often  be  best  not  to  make  any 
parade  of  a  special  aesthetic  purpose,  for  we  are 
on  delicate  ground.  When  we  talk  of  beauty,  un- 
less the  boys  and  girls  comprehend  us,  we  shall 
seem  to  them  like  stilted  and  affected  triflers. 

Real  art  may  generally  be  depended  upon  to 
make  itself  felt,  and  to  exert  a  silent  influence  by 
its  own  inherent  power.  By  coming  again  and 
again  under  the  influence  of  this  power,  we  rise 
in  cultivation  to  be  intelligent  lovers  of  the  beau- 
tiful. We  look  at  a  great  statue  or  a  great  pic- 
ture, or  a  landscape,  or  a  fine  building  with  in- 
creasing pleasure,  if  we  look  often;  so  with  a 
poem,  a  play,  or  an  oration.  In  literature,  how- 
ever, we  do  not  get  our  impressions  of  the  whole 
by  a  simple  look,  but  by  reading  or  hearing,  which 
takes  time;  and  if  there  is  some  disadvantage  in 
this,  there  is  also,  something  gained  in  intelligence 
and  thoroughness,  for  we  have  leisure  to  apply 
such  analytic  tests  as  we  have  at  command.  The 
artist  builds  stroke  by  stroke.  Each  trait  has 
its  place  and  its  significance,  and  we  must  take 


44        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

them  in  as  he  puts  them  on.  There  is  a  beauty  of 
diction,  for  example,  the  more  appreciated  as  the 
fund  of  knowledge  about  words  increases;  clever 
combinations  which,  as  Horace  says,  make  old  and 
familiar  words  seem  new;  there  are  beautiful 
tropes ;  there  is  a  beauty  of  arrangement,  a  beauty 
of  rhythm,  a  fitness  of  action,  if  it  is  narrative  or 
dramatic,  a  beauty  of  imagery,  a  beauty  of 
thought.  A  short  passage,  in  fact,  may  be  a 
work  of  art  in  itself  and  may  be  separately  studied 
as  such. 

The  Tiberius  of  Tacitus  is  a  "miracle  of  art," 
says  Lord  Macaulay,  but  it  is  a  miracle  of  art 
whose  beauties  as  a  whole  are  hardly  within  the 
reach  of  the  ordinary  undergraduate.  Students 
of  Tacitus,  however,  will  know  what  I  mean  when 
I  say  that  a  single  chapter  and  sometimes  a  single 
sentence  is  a  work  of  art,  with  appreciable  ele- 
ments of  beauty,  as — marked  traits  of  individual 
style,  felicitous  combinations  of  words,  poetic  dic- 
tion, pleasant  variations  of  syntax,  and  most  of 
all  the  masterly  marshaling  of  thought,  giving 
decisive  unity  and  at  the  same  time  a  variety  of 
emphasis.  A  familiar  example  is  the  opening  sen- 
tence of  the  second  chapter  of  the  "Annals."  A 
convenient  working  theory,  by  the  way,  is  this 
one  of  variety  in  unity.  Its  application  may  be 
seen  in  Professor  March's  Method  of  Philological 
Study ;  and  I  happen  to  know,  by  reading  the  es- 
says that  are  presented  in  the  contests  for  the 
philological  prize,  that  the  students  make  an  in- 


TEACHING  OF  THE  CLASSICS       45 

telligent  use  of  it  in  their  criticism  of  literature. 

This,  however,  has  reference  to  the  forms  of 
classic  literature,  as  they  are  shaped  under  the 
aesthetic  faculty.  I  should  suppose  that  the  main 
point  would  be  the  contents, — to  lift  the  student 
toward  the  level  of  the  author's  thinking.  I  say 
"toward  the  level,"  for  to  raise  him  to  it  would 
be  a  tremendous  lift.  The  authors  should  be  the 
best  authors,  and  the  books  their  best  books. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  teacher  must 
himself  rise  to  that  level ;  yet  by  that  remark  we 
are  reminded  of  a  standard  of  capacity  and  fitness, 
from  the  test  of  which  perhaps  some  of  us  should 
be  inclined  to  shrink.  There  is  no  magic  in  a 
mere  professorship,  that  endows  a  man  in  that  po- 
sition with  omniscient  insight  to  master  an  au- 
thor's meaning  at  a  glance.  The  hardest  study- 
ing in  our  colleges  is  done  in  the  rooms  of  pro- 
fessors. The  late  Professor  James  Hadley,  of 
Yale  University,  I  am  told,  even  after  years  of 
class-room  experience  that  made  him  illustrious 
as  a  teacher,  never  felt  fully  prepared  to  meet 
his  classes,  and  never  did  meet  one  without  hav- 
ing spent  two  hours  of  study  upon  the  lesson  of 
that  period.  It  gives  a  great  advantage  in  this 
respect  to  keep  to  the  same  books,  and  go  over 
them  again  and  again ;  not  to  lessen  the  labor,  but 
to  make  the  labor  productive  of  new  and  greater 
results.  There  is  no  great  book  that  doesn't 
deepen  to  us  with  repeated  study.  We  find  new 
thoughts  on  every  page  to  say  nothing  of  new 


46        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

and  better  modes  of  bringing  the  thought  out, 
and  presenting  and  illustrating  and  impressing  it 
— matters  of  the  greatest  importance  to  the 
teacher.  We  can  go  to  any  depth  and  still  find 
that  we  are  in  the  realm  of  the  classic  thought. 
Tacitus,  as  statesmen  and  philosophers,  as  well 
as  scholars  suppose,  is  an  unfathomed  depth  of 
wisdom,  both  practical  and  speculative. 

Then  the  masters  of  classic  literature  condense 
a  good  deal.  We  should  hardly  think  so  of  some 
of  them,  Cicero,  for  example,  who  generally  flows 
along  with  such  full  and  rounded  expression ;  but 
even  he  can  condense  a  whole  speech  to  a  sentence, 
and  use  expressions  that  are  fairly  bristling  with 
suggestion. 

Mr.  Emerson  wrote  an  essay  on  old  age,  moved 
to  it  by  reading  again  the  "Cato  Major,"  which 
he  praises — not,  I  fear,  without  some  tone  of  pat- 
ronage— and  thinks  he  has  a  few  points  which 
did  not  occur  to  the  writer  of  "De  Senectute." 
Naturally  our  modern  life  has  broadened  the  pic- 
ture a  little,  but  nearly  all,  if  not  absolutely  every 
one  of  his  points,  can  be  found  on  the  classic  page, 
in  the  possibilities  of  meaning  covered  by  its  terse 
and  significant  phrases.  One  of  Emerson's  best 
items,  for  example,  is  that  old  age  "has  found  ex- 
pression," to  which  he  devotes  two  pages.  It  is 
one  word  in  Cicero,  wxit,  with  an  environment  of 
context,  that  makes  it  pregnant  with  all  this 
Emersonian  meaning.  Elsewhere  Emerson  de- 
votes half  a  dozen  pages  on  travel,  to  what  is  sub- 


TEACHING  OF  THE  CLASSICS       47 

stantially  an  expansion  of  the  six  words  in  Hor- 
ace,— Patrice  quis  exsul  se  quoqwe  fugit.  Mat- 
thew Arnold  wrote  an  essay  and  a  whole  volume 
of  criticism,  in  both  of  which  the  central  thought 
was  the  single  word  from  Aristotle —  axoudaedTyz  • 
and,  in  fact,  it  seems  to  be  a  prominent  feature 
in  the  mission  of  modern  literature  to  draw  nutri- 
ment from  the  ancient  and  dilute  it.  A  grand 
mission  it  is  too.  Just  what  I  would  urge  upon 
the  teacher  of  classic  literature, — to  expand  and 
bring  home  to  students  as  they  find  it  suitable, 
or  can  make  it  suitable,  the  truth  in  the  old  writ- 
ers. This  is  the  source  of  their  power  to  human- 
ize, and  we  should  make  the  most  of  it. 

Xenophon  and  Cicero  and  Horace  are  as  mod- 
ern as  Tennyson,  or  Holmes,  or  Arnold,  far  richer 
in  the  fruits  of  practical  and  pertinent,  as  well  as 
profound  thinking.  They  discuss  questions  which 
still  confront  us,  questions  pertaining  to  political 
philosophy,  government,  society,  business,  morals, 
religion  and  personal  life.  We  can  derive  from 
them  a  world  of  practical  prudence  for  our  daily 
doings,  and  those  influences  which  develop  the  best 
qualities  of  mind  and  heart.  In  the  linguistic 
part  of  our  work  the  aim  should  be  a  scholarly 
mastery  of  the  language,  that  the  student  may  be 
able  to  appreciate  the  shades  of  thought  con- 
veyed in  the  words,  the  grammatical  forms  and  the 
idioms.  The  gist  of  a  passage,  however,  or  the 
thought  to  which  it  may  lead  up  by  some  proc- 
ess of  legitimate  suggestion  may  be  infinitely 


48        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

more  important  than  any  modal  shading  in  its 
grammatical  forms,  and  it  would  be  a  pity  if  we 
were  so  intent  upon  impressing  our  pet  theory 
about  the  imperfect  indicative  in  the  apodosis  of 
a  conditional  sentence  contrary  to  the  fact,  as  to 
let  the  student  miss  the  writer's  main  thought. 


HIGH  SCHOOL  TRAINING  IN  ITS 
BEARING  UPON  CIVIC  INTEGRITY 

The  phrase  "civic  righteousness,"  quite  cur- 
rent of  late,  is  a  protest  against  the  ways  of 
many  of  our  practical  politicians.  "Public  office 
is  a  public  trust"  is  another  statement  of  it  and 
a  little  older,  going  back  to  the  times  of  Mr. 
Cleveland;  "Thou  shalt  not  steal,"  still  older,  go- 
ing back  to  the  Ten  Commandments. 

When  individuals  as  members  of  political  par- 
ties claim;  public  place  as  the  reward  of  political 
service, — that  seems  simple,  and  relatively  inno- 
cent; but  when  the  members  of  the  controlling 
group  stand  together  and  seek  personal  gain,  get 
office  and  also  get  the  contracts,  take  advantage 
of  the  influence  and  opportunities  of  public  posi- 
tion to  promote  in  their  own  behalf  graft  and  ex- 
tortion and  all  the  methods  of  "shaking  the  plum 
tree,"  that  is  a  more  serious  matter. 

If  there  is  some  difficulty  in  reaching  with  re- 
forming influences  those  who  are  now  in  active 
politics,  we  may  at  least  reach  those  who  are  to 
be  our  politicians  in  the  years  to  come.  We 

should  inculcate  patriotic  devotion,  and  prepare 

49 


50        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

for  efficient  service,  but  also  and  much  more  we 
should  promote  the  growth  of  civic  integrity. 

What  we  want,  however,  is  universal  integrity 
— that  kind  of  righteousness  which  will  not  allow 
a  man  in  passing  from  one  department  of  his  life 
to  another,  to  drop  from  one  level  of  moral  judg- 
ment and  action  to  another.  Men  quite  honor- 
able in  private  life,  upright  in  dealing,  esteemed 
as  friends  and  neighbors,  get  into  public  life  and 
their  conduct  often  falls  to  a  level  that  makes  a 
stench,  yet  without  violating  their  own  notions  of 
right  and  wrong.  Our  Capitol  plunderers  regard 
their  prosecution  by  the  state  as  a  cruel  persecu- 
tion, and  they  are  dying  of  broken  hearts  as 
martyrs ! 

We  want  our  boys  and  girls  to  be  sound  through 
and  through.  Of  course  we  must  be  prepared 
to  meet  with  moral  immaturity.  The  ethical 
sense  develops  slowly.  Boys  especially  pass 
through  periods  not  only  of  thoughtlessness  but 
also  of  cruelty,  and  depravity — "pass  through," 
thank  God !  and  come  out  safe  and  true  on  the 
upper  levels — the  result  in  some  sense  of  a  nat- 
ural growth  but  also  of  necessary  training,  home 
training  I  should  say  first  of  all. 

A  pertinent  question  right  here  is  whether  the 
lower  moral  tone  in  high  schools  is  in  part  due  to 
the  growing  absence  of  restraint  and  moral  train- 
ing in  the  homes.  My  own  impression  is  that  the 
modern  surging  of  our  masses  in  the  increasing 
hours  of  leisure,  up  and  down  our  streets  and  out 


HIGH  SCHOOL  TRAINING  51 

and  in  to  our  so-called  "parks"  in  search  of 
trivial  amusement,  is  one  of  the  causes  of  weak- 
ened moral  fiber,  though  there  be  no  positive  im- 
morality in  the  amusements.  If  so,  the  entire 
home  suffers — father  and  mother  with  the  boys 
and  girls.  If  so  further,  the  trolley  car,  the 
moving  picture,  and  the  comic  supplement  are  not 
unmixed  blessings.  They  have  a  mighty  clutch 
upon  us — they  give  us  so  much  for  five  cents. 

We  should  all  hesitate  to  say,  however,  that 
there  is  a  general  falling  back  in  morals.  We 
recognize  the  fact  that  moral  progress  is  not  a 
uniform  upward  movement,  but  a  rhythmic  move- 
ment up  and  down,  like  a  tide  that  flows  and  then 
ebbs  again,  and  sometimes  we  lose  nearly  as  much 
— quite  as  much — as  we  had  gained.  Men  push 
on  with  earnestness  in  certain  directions  of  re- 
form, and  while  the  enthusiastic  effort  lasts,  the 
movement  is  upward;  but  when  the  advancing 
force  has  spent  itself,  the  reaction  sets  in.  Then 
the  wave  drops  back,  and  may  reach  or  even  fall 
below  its  old  starting  level.  That  is  a  common 
experience  in  political  reforms.  Yet  in  long  pe- 
riods and  when  we  compare  the  present  with  the 
remote  past,  we  do  see  substantial  gains. 

But  moral  influence  in  the  training  of  the 
young  should  be  without  these  rhythmic  lapses. 
There  must  be  vigilant  effort  to  hold  a  steady 
and,  if  possible,  a  rising  level.  Teachers  who 
keenly  feel  that  responsibility  are  under  a  strain 
that  is  never  released. 


52        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

I  have  been  used  to  dealing  with  students  in  col- 
lege and  thinking  of  educational  problems  as  they 
arise  there.  Ethical  needs  make  a  loud  call  there 
also,  and  there  must  be  constant  attention  to 
their  demands.  These  demands  are  not  met  by  a 
term  or  two  of  lectures  in  moral  science.  The 
enforcement  of  ethical  principles  must  be  constant, 
and  in  connection  with  conduct.  General  courses 
may  well  include  instruction  in  moral  science,  but 
that  is  a  matter  quite  different,  and  pursued  with 
a  purpose  quite  remote  from  the  instillation  of 
fundamental  moral  principles.  This  last  may  be 
done  without  scientific  instruction  in  ethics.  In- 
deed, I  think  it  may  be  done  best  incidentally  in 
connection  with  concrete  examples  of  the  various 
virtues,  especially  if  the  presentation  can  be  such 
as  to  rouse  thought,  and  if  possible  feeling — but 
without  preachment. 

The  opportunities  for  this  come  best  in  litera- 
ture, and  this  is  one  of  the  prime  values  of  lit- 
erary courses.  Our  college  reading  offers  abun- 
dant openings  for  it,  and  high  school  reading  even 
more  so, — all  Greek  and  Roman  authors,  with 
differences  of  course,  and  the  modern  languages 
too,  especially  the  English — Bacon,  Bunyan, 
Burke,  Ruskin  and  Tennyson. 

We  must  use  examples.  The  virtues  have  to 
be  embodied  for  teaching.  The  young  especially 
must  be  lifted  to  a  higher  level  of  action  and  feel- 
ing through  their  imaginative  sympathy  with  the 
lives  of  others.  Utilitarian  wisdom  won't  do. 


HIGH  SCHOOL  TRAINING  53 

Anything  like  calculating  prudence  is  suffocating. 
What  we  need,  especially  for  the  young,  is  high 
traditions  of  personal  heroism  and  faith. 

They  cannot  make  ideals  of  conduct  from  the 
proverbs  of  Solomon,  wise  as  these  are,  soundly  as 
they  are  based  on  human  experience ;  or  from  any 
form  of  literature  in  which  wisdom  is  condensed 
into  nuggets.  There  must  be  embodiment — that 
which  appeals  in  a  lively  way  to  the  imagination. 
That  brings  us  back  to  sympathetic  contact  with 
the  persons  and  the  situations  of  literature. 
These  picturesque  lessons  add  to  the  real  life  just 
as  experience  does.  Effective  moral  ideals  are 
not  generated  by  physical  surroundings  such  as 
grand  buildings,  or  fine  apparatus,  or  great  li- 
braries— except  so  far  as  particular  books  when 
we  get  into  them  may  be  to  us  the  vehicles  of  per- 
sonal force.  Ideals  are  not  generated  by  pre- 
cepts of  wisdom;  ideals  are  generated  by  con- 
tagions,— by  the  enthusiasms  of  personal  contact 
with  men  and  women  who  have  spiritual  fiber 
enough  to  project  an  ideal  and  to  impress  it  upon 
those  with  whom  they  come  in  contact. 

Your  young  men  who  go  into  your  markets  and 
exchanges  depending  upon  the  commercial  world 
for  their  ideals  of  honesty  will  sink  to  the  level 
of  the  commercial  world  in  that  respect  and  the 
ideal  will  soon  emerge  in  some  such  form  as 
"Business  is  business."  They  will  do  pretty  well 
if  they  live  up  to  the  saying,  "Honesty  is  the  best 
policy" ;  but  that  is  a  low  standard.  You  can 


54        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

easily  detect  the  commercial  tone  of  it — its  calcu- 
lating prudence.  The  man  who  is  honest  on  that 
principle  will  expect  his  honesty  to  pay.  But 
let  that  boy  go  into  daily  fellowship  with  a  teacher 
who  is  sincere  and  clean  of  heart  and  life,  and  he 
will  soon  know  that  he  must  be  honest  whether  it 
pay  or  not;  and  by  the  same  token  he  must  be 
pure  and  kind  and  patient  and  just — whether  it 
pay  or  not. 

Every  line  of  suggestion  brings  us  back  to  the 
teacher,  who  must  therefore  be  the  best  possible, 
and  whose  distinct  personal  force  must  not  be  lost 
in  the  elaborate  organization  of  school  work. 
That  is  one  of  our  dangers,  for  organization  has 
its  obvious  advantages, — of  which  diminished  cost 
is  one  and  perhaps  the  main  one,  though  there  is 
also  the  charm  of  the  smooth  working  of  an  uni- 
fied system.  It  is  magnificent  to  see  in  a  build- 
ing of,  say,  two  thousand  pupils,  everything  go- 
ing on  like  clock-work.  But  it  may  be  just  about 
as  dead  as  a  clock,  just  about  as  far  away  as  a 
clock  from  any  transfer  of  inspiring  influence  from 
life  to  life.  I  have  noted  schools  where  there  were 
many  teachers  of  varying  capacity  doubtless,  but 
all  brought  to  about  one  level  by  methods  of 
organization  that  made  them  like  cogs  in  a  wheel. 

Routine  often  minimizes  the  personal  element  in 
education.  We  must  get  back  to  the  personality 
of  the  teacher,  and  take  advantage  of  every  ele- 
ment of  the  situation,  and  every  element  of  char- 
acter that  makes  the  personality  effective. 


HIGH  SCHOOL  TRAINING  55 

Colleges  and  universities  are  feeling  this  and 
are  meeting  the  need  by  an  attempt  to  bring  stu- 
dents to  meet  teachers  personally,  or  in  smaller 
groups.  The  smaller  colleges  are  doing  this  with- 
out difficulty,  for  their  groups  are  already  small; 
but  our  larger  institutions  are  making  a  notable 
move  in  this  direction.  "Individual  Training  in 
our  Colleges,"  the  title  of  a  book  that  has  been 
widely  read,  and  "The  Reorganization  of  our 
Colleges,"  a  more  recent  book  by  the  same  author 
(Mr.  Birdseye)  give  us  a  clear  indication  of  the 
demand. 

Specialization  of  teachers  in  departments  of  in- 
struction may  also  be  responsible  for  some  with- 
drawal of  emphasis  from  moral  training;  not  (so 
much  in  high  schools  however  as  in  colleges  and 
universities.  Men  prepare  themselves,  by  all  de- 
grees of  minute  research,  in  some  special  branch, 
and,  when  they  take  positions  as  instructors  or 
lecturers,  they  seem  to  feel  responsible  only  for  a 
certain  modicum  of  instruction  without  much  re- 
gard to  personal  influence  and  character. 

At  the  recent  meeting  of  the  International  Kin- 
dergarten Union  in  Buffalo,  Mr.  Percival  Chubb 
made  an  address  in  which  he  had  something  to  say 
on  the  comic  supplement.  I  saw  a  notice  of  the 
address  in  a  recent  weekly  and  should  like  to 
quote  a  few  lines  from  it.  "I  found,"  he  says, 
"no  diminution  of  that  distressing  vulgarity  which 
seems  to  be  growing  upon  us  in  our  great  cities. 
Vulgarity — a  flaunting  commonness  of  mind — ap- 


56        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

pears  to  be  a  product  of  the  great  city.  I  at- 
tribute the  inroads  of  this  vulgarity  to  the  de- 
cline of  reverence,  the  lack  of  any  awed  converse 
with  great  things,  an  insensitiveness  to  what  is 
fine,  distinguished,  holy.  It  is  what  I  have  to 
cope  with  in  the  young  city  people,  in  high  school 
and  college,  in  attempting  to  quicken  their  deeper 
admiration  for  great  literature;  commonness  of 
mind,  a  cheap  flippancy,  a  lack  of  refined  humil- 
ity; of  reverence  in  short.  It  is  vulgarity  at  its 
worst  that  thrusts  its  impertinent  tongue  at  us  in 
the  comic  supplements,  in  crude  violence  of  color, 
in  grotesque  distortions  of  the  human  counte- 
nance and  figure  ...  in  the  caricatures  of 
elders,  aunts  and  uncles,  grandmothers  and  grand- 
fathers, aye,  mothers  and  fathers,  who  are  trans- 
formed to  clowns  in  order  that  pert  youngsters 
may  have  their  little  jokes.  .  .  .  More  and 
more  the  function  of  the  school  and  the  teacher 
becomes  that  of  providing  a  protective  environ- 
ment in  which  for  a  few  hours  every  day  the  child 
shall  be  surrounded  with  influences  of  health  and 
quiet,  of  order  and  simple  beauty.  The  school 
has  to  save  the  child  from  the  unhealthy  and  un- 
lovely world  outside.  That  is  a  deplorably  nega- 
tive function.  We  cannot  rest  there.  We  must 
transform  the  environment.  We  must  begin  with 
ourselves  by  working  for  a  clean  press  and,  above 
all,  for  a  dignified  Sunday  press." 

That  is  a  notable  point — the  "deplorably  nega- 
tive  function"  of  our  work.     In  morals  and  in 


HIGH  SCHOOL  TRAINING  57 

the  building  up  of  character  in  men  and  women 
it  is  mainly  protective.  We  are  in  the  midst  of 
a  widespread  abandoment  to  superficial  amuse- 
ment that  is  enervating,  vulgarizing,  in  many  in- 
stances demoralizing,  and  one  of  the  duties  that 
confront  teachers  is  to  create  and  stimulate  a 
taste  for  better  forms  of  amusement.  The  comic 
supplement,  the  moving  picture  and  the  suburban 
park  will  do  anything  to  get  the  nickels.  We 
must  do  our  utmost  to  get  the  boys  and  girls. 


VI 
EFFICIENCY  THE  AIM  OF  EDUCATION 

The  ideals  of  education  are  variously  conceived 
and  expressed,  sometimes  quite  crudely.  A  New 
York  daily  paper  recently,  in  response  to  the  per- 
plexity of  a  college  president  who  found  in  the 
assets  of  his  institution  $200,000  not  invested, 
promptly  replied  that  the  proper  thing  to  do 
would  be  to  invest  the  money  at  five  per  cent, 
and  secure  one  good  professor  at  ten  thousand 
dollars  a  year ! 

A  heroic  idea,  but  somewhat  of  a  venture, — 
there  are  so  many  items  of  qualification  that 
money  can  not  pay  for  or  secure.  You  can  pay 
for  a  man's  time,  for  his  knowledge,  perhaps  for 
his  talent  in  certain  directions,  for  his  skill  in  do- 
ing specific  things ;  but  his  genius  and  the  ability 
to  inspire, — you  cannot  pay  for  these,  or  demand 
them  in  fulfillment  of  a  contract.  They  are  too 
subtle  and  personal  to  be  commercialized.  Then, 
sympathetic  insight  into  the  real  purposes  of 
education ;  devotion,  a  man's  downright  and  life- 
long devotion  to  a  good  work  for  the  making  of 
men, — can  you  buy  these?  or  be  sure  of  getting 

them  by  laying  out   a  liberal  sum  in  payment? 

58 


THE  AIM  OF  EDUCATION  59 

Then  the  element  of  mere  size, — I  hesitate  to  say 
greatness,  for  while  there  are  great  teachers, 
there  are  not  many ;  but  size  at  least,  that  breadth 
of  thought  and  sympathy  that  gives  a  man  an 
outlook  beyond  the  margins  of  his  own  depart- 
ment,— we  must  have  that. 

One  of  the  unfortunate  tendencies  in  our  ex- 
panding institutions  of  learning  is  that  large 
faculties  are  likely  to  disintegrate,  falling  into 
groups  or  schools,  and  the  groups  into  individuals, 
so  that  any  one  man,  competent  in  his  own  place, 
meeting  his  own  classes  and  busy  with  them,  may 
so  concentrate  upon  these  subjects  and  these 
classes  as  to  be  narrowed  to  that  specific  line,  his 
interest  and  his  sympathies  circumscribed,  until 
he  may  come  to  think  that  his  department  is  the 
whole  thing. 

But  in  every  intelligent  scheme  of  education, 
the  departments  of  instruction  are  not  merely 
put  side  by  side,  articulated,  but  enter  into  each 
other  as  in  an  organic  union.  They  have  a  com- 
mon vitalit}'.  Knife  the  Mathematics  and  the 
Philosophy  will  bleed,  History,  the  sciences — all 
studies  in  fact  in  which  accurate  thinking  is  nec- 
essary. Strike  the  Latin  and  it  is  the  English 
that  gets  a  black  eye.  Men  must  be  large  enough 
in  comprehension  and  quick  enough  in  sympathy 
to  see  and  feel  this  vital  unity  between  the  parts 
of  a  system  and  to  give  its  real  value  to  each 
branch  though  quite  remote  from  his  own. 

There  are  certain  results  that  the  college  as  a 


60        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

whole  must  achieve  and  that  are  not  reached  by 
the  mere  imparting  of  a  modicum  of  instruction 
in  each  department  separately,  but  by  coordina- 
tion; by  each  working  with  the  others  and  each 
availing  himself  of  the  others'  help ;  and  especially 
in  inspiration,  by  each  opening  for  men  the  gate- 
way to  higher  standards  in  the  best  things.  That 
is  the  secret  of  efficiency  even  in  matters  the  most 
practical. 

In  doing  the  work  of  the  world,  we  see  that  men 
must  go  up,  or  in  the  long  run  they  must  go  out. 
Take  the  simplest  illustration,  the  men  that  make 
the  fires  in  locomotives  on  our  railways ;  out  of 
every  hundred,  seventeen  step  forward  to  the 
throttle  of  the  locomotive ;  six  of  this  seventeen 
are  advanced  to  locomotives  on  what  are  called 
"passenger  runs."  There  is  this  sifting  of  men 
on  the  basis  of  their  capacity  to  take  responsi- 
bility. What  then  becomes  of  the  eighty-five? 
Well,  there  is  room  for  them  to  rise  in  firing ;  and 
so  long  as  they  increase  in  efficiency  on  their  own 
level  they  are  safe ;  but  if  they  do  not  so  increase, 
there  is  other  work  for  them — in  the  switching 
crew,  or  the  round  house,  or  on  the  roadbed  and 
they  must  go  out. 

That  is  true  of  every  level  of  labor.  It  is  a 
law,  inexorable;  rather  a  grim  law  it  would  ap- 
pear at  first  glimpse,  but  really  benevolent  and 
cheerful,  for  it  is  the  basis  of  the  noblest  optimism 
that  we  can  entertain,  and  for  this  reason;  it  is 
easier  to  go  up  than  to  go  down.  Note  the  rise 


THE  AIM  OF  EDUCATION  61 

of  a  man  in  his  business  or  his  profession,  and  you 
will  see  that  every  step  of  ascent  brings  him  to  his 
own,  to  that  in  which  he  is  at  home;  the  lawyer, 
from  the  irksome  task  of  writing,  to  dictation  to  a 
stenographer;  from  his  petty  cases  to  his  impor- 
tant suits  at  law  that  involve  great  responsibility, 
— in  every  item  of  his  work  or  any  man's  work; 
even  in  so  trivial  a  matter  as  his  movements  from 
his  home  to  his  business, — from  trudging  on  the 
sidewalk  to  riding  in  the  trolley,  from  that  to  his 
carriage,  and  in  each  for  the  first  time  with  the 
feeling  and  look  of  one  in  his  native  air.  Next 
year  you  will  see  him  in  his  Packard,  and  it  fits 
him !  You  might  think  he  had  been  born  in  a 
Limousine !  Now  put  that  man  back  from  his 
Packard  to  his  wheelbarrow  and  how  does  he 
look?  And  how  does  he  feel? 

This  is  the  hope  of  humanity,  that  men  can  go 
up  and  be  at  home.  We  can  go  down  too,  of 
course,  but  the  whole  atmosphere  of  a  lower  situa- 
tion is  striking  and  offensive  to  us,  and  we  can 
only  by  degrees  and  with  resistance  settle  down 
to  it. 

It  is  so  in  social  adjustments,  so  in  culture,  so 
in  art.  Raise  a  man  to  better  social  conditions 
than  those  to  which  he  has  been  accustomed  and 
he  will  feel  an  expansive  thrill  of  adaptation  that 
will  make  him  instantly  at  home.  Let  there  be 
an  uplift  in  culture,  in  literature,  music,  or  any 
art  and  the  soul  flutters  with  the  joy  of  a  new 
possession,  a  new  and  congenial  environment ;  but 


62        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

you  can't  go  downward  in  society,  in  culture  or 
in  art  without  a  chill. 

It  is  so  in  morals,  so  in  the  achievements  of 
the  spirit.  There  is  no  compulsion  toward  the 
downward  way.  No  man  can  plead  his  evil  in- 
clinations as  an  excuse  for  his  fall. 

Dr.  Osborn  used  to  tell  us  that  "total  depravity 
can  no  more  take  a  man  to  perdition,  than  gravi- 
tation can  take  him  to  the  cellar."  He  can  go 
to  the  cellar  if  he  wants  to,  but  if  he  wants  to  he 
can  mount  to  the  chamber  of  the  king.  Of 
course  men  do  go  down  and  it  often  seems  like 
an  easy  drift;  but  the  way  of  the  trangressor  is 
hard.  Judas  went  down, — was  it  easy?  Nay,  it 
was  the  hardest  thing  he  ever  did.  Note  his  hesi- 
tation, his  stings  of  conscience;  note  that  every 
step  must  be  taken  against  an  inner  protest,  that 
the  memory  of  his  innocence  brings  a  fresh  smart 
at  every  turn.  The  poets  from  Homer  to  Tenny- 
son have  been  telling  the  world  that  "sorrow's 
crown  of  sorrow  is  remembering  better  things." 
Judas  had  stood  under  the  radiance  of  the  Mas- 
ter's presence,  on  a  level  with  those  who  could  heal 
diseases  by  a  touch  or  a  word.  He  cannot  de- 
scend from  that  height  without  the  sorrows  of  a 
revulsion.  He  would  gladly  recall  the  deed  if  he 
could.  He  can  take  the  silver  back  and  fling  it 
on  the  table  of  those  with  whom  he  has  bartered, 
but,  the  deed  remains,  and  he  passes  from  regret 
to  remorse,  from  remorse  to  despair  and  from 
despair  to  suicide.  He  is  down  and  out! 


THE  AIM  OF  EDUCATION  63 

But  note  the  other  disciples  who  were  obedient 
to  the  upward  summons,  drawing  nearer  and 
nearer  to  him  who  was  the  source  of  their  life, 
always  rising  from  one  level  of  discipleship  to  a 
higher  level;  and  was  it  hard?  The  easiest  thing 
they  ever  did !  Rising  in  influence  and  power  and 
each  rising  to  that  which  was  his  own  place. 

It  is  the  very  nature  of  spirit  to  be  qualified 
by  inspiration  for  these  sudden  betterments  of 
condition.  Any  upward  movement  is  in  response 
to  the  natural  aspiration  of  the  soul;  and  uni- 
versally we  go  upward  with  joy,  downward  with 
regret  and  chagrin. 

This  point  may  well  be  earnestly  pressed,  for 
it  is  the  secret  of  efficiency, — the  animation  of 
young  life  with  a  reasonable  incitement  to  im- 
prove. None  are  more  open  to  such  wholesome 
ambitions  than  the  young  and  it  should  be  a  ruling 
factor  in  the  aim  of  those  who  teach  to  set  for 
those  they  teach,  high  standards  in  the  best 
things. 

It  is  important  also  that  our  progress  in  gen- 
eral, depends  largely  upon  this  spiritual  uplift  of 
individuals. 

I  am  not  speaking  of  material  progress.  A 
high  degree  of  advancement  in  externals,  as  in 
wealth,  abundance  and  wonderful  inventions,  may 
co-exist  with  moral  relapse  and  decay.  But  real 
progress  is  what  we  must  seek, — the  increasing 
prevalence  of  ennobling  ideas  and  aims  in  com- 
munities as  wholes,  growth  in  knowledge  not 


64        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

only,  but  in  character  and  in  general  welfare. 
We  see  that  the  forward  movement  in  these  di- 
rections is  exceedingly  slow.  It  is  impossible  to 
lift  masses  of  men  bodily  to  these  conditions  and 
sometimes  there  is  even  a  backward  pull.  Prog- 
ress appears  to  be  rhythmic,  rising  and  falling, 
and  not  infrequently  each  fall  is  deeper  than  the 
last.  It  is  pendulous,  swinging  this  way  and 
that ;  and  sometimes  the  forward  swing  falls  short 
of  the  one  that  preceded  it.  The  more  need  then, 
of  these  personal  influences  that  are  the  chief 
agencies  of  progress,  not  only  that  individuals 
may  rise  out  of  their  environment,  but  may  then 
turn  and  devote  their  lives  to  the  task  of  improv- 
ing that  environment.  Higher  education  fails  in 
its  main  purpose  if  the  college  does  not  set  high 
standards  for  men  and  women  in  the  best  things, 
and  thus  qualify  them  to  be  themselves  centers  of 
this  progressive  influence. 


VII 
SIMPLIFIED  SPELLING  * 

The  fraze  "simplified  spelling"  limits  the  dis- 
cussion to  the  changes  proposed  by  the  philolog- 
ical societies.  These  changes  hav  receivd  authori- 
zation by  being  introduced  as  a  supplement  into 
the  Century  Dictionary,  and  constitute  a  mod- 
erate stage  of  amendment  as  compared  with  the 
fonetic  ideals  of  reformers;  yet  so  difficult  is  it  to 
introduce  any  variation  from  the  establisht  or- 
thografy  that  it  becums  a  serious  question 
whether  even  so  small  a  change  as  this  is  feasibl. 

I  shal  discus  a  singl  hindrance,  viz,  the  feeling, 
amounting  to  a  prejudice,  in  favor  of  the  forms 
of  words  now  familiar  to  the  ey.  We  hav  many 
and  delicate  associations  with  the  writn  or  printed 
word,  and  any  tampering  with  its  form  offends  us. 
There  ar  literary  and  scolarly  associations :  it  givs 
a  Greek  scolar  a  chil  to  see  phlegm  speld  flem. 
There  ar  professional  associations :  a  professor  of 
physics  would  feel  robd  of  half  his  dignity  if  it 
wer  speld  fysics;  and  there  ar  personal  associa- 
tions of  various  kinds. 

Foren  words,  too,  cling  to  their  nativ  habits, 

*  The    spelling    in    this    address    exhibits    some    of    the 
changes  recommended  by  the  Simplified  Spelling  Board. 

65 


66        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

and  it  would  seem  proper  that  they  should  do  so 
up  to  a  certain  point.  When  they  hav  becum 
thoroly  naturalized  they  may  wel  yield  to  Eng- 
lish analogies.  Very  litl  fault  is  found  with  pro- 
gram, brought  into  conformity  with  diagram,  epi- 
gram, etc. 

It  wil  be  useful  to  attempt  a  classification  of 
our  peple  in  their  relations  to  this  prejudice. 
There  ar,  first,  those  who  ar  set  down  in  the  census 
as  illiterate,  amounting  to  sumthing  like  seven  mil- 
lions. Then  a  class  not  enumerated,  perhaps  two 
or  three  times  as  many  as  the  illiterates — viz, 
those  who  read,  but  who  do  so  with  so  much  diffi- 
culty, spelling  and  stumbling  along,  that  the  ac- 
complishment is  a  source  of  very  litl  plezure  or 
profit  to  them.  Then  the  foren  born,  who  lern  to 
speak  English  with  no  great  difficulty,  but  rarely 
master  the  intricacies  of  English  spelling.  This 
clas  wil  fall  litl  if  any  below  ten  millions.  Then, 
fourthly,  scool  children,  a  large  majority  of  whom 
ar  in  daily  strugl  with  the  spelling  book  and  the 
reader.  Uniting  these  four  classes  we  hav  an  ag- 
gregate of  more  than  fifty  millions  to  whom  any 
amendment  of  orthografy  that  woud  make  lern- 
ing  to  read  easier  woud  be  an  unmixt  good.  My 
point  is  that  from  these  classes  we  should  en- 
counter no  prejudice.  They  must  sacrifice  noth- 
ing, not  even  feeling.  Many  of  them  know  just 
enuf  about  our  spelling  to  visit  upon  it,  under  the 
impulse  of  the  clear  instincts  of  truth  and  reason, 
the  hatred  it  deservs. 


SIMPLIFIED  SPELLING  67 

A  fifth  class,  from  whom  no  prejudice  would  be 
encountered,  comprises  those  who,  whether  as  the 
promoters  of  scolarship  and  the  science  of  lan- 
guage or  from  motives  of  economy  and  filan- 
thropy,  favor  the  reform. 

In  the  remainder  of  our  eighty-five  millions  we 
find  the  curious  results  of  the  habit  of  much  read- 
ing. 

The  art  of  printing  found  the  English  in  rather 
a  chaotic  condition  orthograficaly,  and  in  course 
of  time  the  printers  gave  it  uniformity.  They  fixt 
it  arbitrarily  often,  according  to  their  conven- 
ience or  their  ignorant  notions  of  what  it  should 
be.  We  read  it  as  they  printed  it,  and  think  it 
must  be  so — it  cant  be  otherwise.  So  vivid  and 
permanent  ar  the  impressions  of  eyesight  that  the 
printed  word  becums  the  word  to  us.  We  cum  to 
luv  even  its  silent  letters  and  its  uncouth  combi- 
nations, and  regard  them  as  necessarily  and 
organicaly  a  part  of  the  word.  Cut  off  the  b 
from  thumb  and  the  word  is  left  mangld  and  bleed- 
ing! 

A  litl  serious  candid  reflection  would  convince  us 
that  the  writn  word  is  a  ded  thing.  The  living 
word  is  that  which  is  spoken.  Whatever  there 
is  that  makes  a  word  analogous  to  an  organism 
is  to  be  found  in  the  connection  which  exists  be- 
tween the  organ  of  the  mind  and  the  organs  of 
speech,  of  such  nature  that  states  of  mind  produce 
movements  in  the  latter.  As  we  ar  constituted 
the  organs  of  speech  ar  vocal,  tho  we  may  eke 


68        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

out  meaning  with  what  seem  to  be  instinctiv  ges- 
tures. The  mind  seeks  to  utter  itself  by  vocal 
movements,  not  by  movement  of  the  musls  that 
write  or  the  musls  that  print.  There  seems  to 
be  a  faculty  of  speech,  the  result  of  our  natural 
constitution;  but  writing  and  printing  ar  inven- 
tions. Language  has  its  natural  growth  and 
changes  according  to  certain  laws ;  writing  and 
printing  ar  mechanical  operations,  every  detail  of 
which  may  vary  arbitrarily.  Our  attachment  to 
the  printed  word,  therefore,  is  a  matter  of  associa- 
tion and  habit. 

I  hav  brought  this  matter  to  a  test  in  my  own 
experience.  I  onse  had  a  strong  preference  for 
the  establisht  spelling;  a  reluctance  to  depart 
from  it ;  a  tendency  to  associate  the  fonetic  forms 
of  words  with  illiteracy  and  ignorance;  but  that 
feeling  has  holely  past  away.  It  has  been  my 
practice  for  many  years  in  my  own  writing  and 
very  largely  in  my  correspondence  to  spel  accord- 
ing to  fonetic  standards.  The  result  is  that  I 
hav  broken  up  the  habit  of  thinking  and  feeling 
that  t-h-o  must  be  written  t-h-o-u-g-h.  T-h-o  is 
the  word  to  me,  nor  do  I  hav  to  eke  out  its  mean- 
ing by  a  mental  picture  of  the  larger  form.  Even 
in  homonyms  I  hav  no  difficulty.  Whether  it  is 
sum  m/oney  or  a  sum  of  money,  it  is  all  the  same 
to  me  (provided  it  is  enuf),  and  I  instinctively 
spel  it  s-u-m  in  either  case. 

I  conclude,  therefore,  that  those  who  think  the 
printed  form  is  properly  the  word  are  simply  un- 


SIMPLIFIED  SPELLING  69 

der     the     influence     of     a     very     strange     spel. 

When  it  cums  to  reasons,  we  are  apt  to  base 
our  preference  for  the  establisht  spelling  ion  the 
claim  that  it  is  historical;  that  it  suggests  the 
derivation  of  words,  etc.  In  many  cases,  it  is 
true,  the  silent  letters  ar  the  monuments  of  vanisht 
sound ;  but  it  seems  a  strange  economy  to  make 
the  word  itself,  that  must  pass  current  in  daily 
and  hourly  intercourse,  the  lumber-room  of  its 
own  worn-out  machinery.  In  a  surprizing  num- 
ber of  cases,  however,  the  spelling  of  English 
words  is  misleading  as  to  derivation.  The  g  in 
sovereign  suggests  a  connection  with  reign;  but  it 
is  from  superanus.  The  s  in  island  suggests  isle 
and  the  Latin  insula,  with  neither  fof  which  it  has 
anything  to  do.  The  word  is  properly  Hand,  and 
was  so  speld  in  erlier  English.  The  s  in  isle  also 
is  a  comparatively  modern  interloper;  for  tho  the 
word  is  ultimately  derived  from  insula  it  came  into 
English  in  the  form  He  from  the  French.  The 
w  in  whole  conceals  the  derivation  of  the  word ; 
the  I  in  could  is  a  blunder ;  so  the  h  in  ghost,  the 
g  in  foreign,  the  i  in  parliament,  and  in  scores  and 
hundreds  of  words  letters  hav  been  introduced  in 
reckless  violation  of  etymology. 

Many  of  our  spellings  also  ar  simply  pedantic. 
Indict  came  to  us  from  the  French  in  the  form 
indite;  but  when  Latin  came  to  be  studied  again 
and  it  was  discoverd  that  the  ultimate  derivation 
was  from  indictare,  c  was  inserted  as  a  record  of 
what?  Sumbody's  erudition!  So  victuals  Chaucer 


70        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

spels  vitaille,  directly  from  the  French.  Our 
present  spelling  would  suggest  that  the  word 
came  from  Latin  victualia,  which  is  not  true. 
And  what  shal  we  say  of  such  cases  as  tongue?  a 
simpl  Anglo-Saxon  word,  of  two  syllabls  origi- 
nally, but  which  lost  its  ending  by  fonetic  decay 
and  was  then  increast  by  the  appendage  ue  either 
in  burlesque  or  servil  imitation  of  the  French 
langue.  I  am,  inclined  to  think  it  was  a  joke,  as 
the  playful  paragrafers  now  put  -ov&ky  and  -vitch 
after  familiar  English  words  in  burlesque  of  Tol- 
stoi. But  think  of  petrifying  a  stupid  joke  like 
that  in  the  permanent  forms  of  language !  Think 
of  compelling  a  dozen  generations  of  English- 
speaking  children  to  lern  it,  and  as  many  genera- 
tions of  writers  and  printers  to  write  and  print  it ! 
Then  think  of  brilliant  scolars,  at  the  cloze  of  this 
nineteenth  century,  coming  before  us  to  defend 
the  spelling  on  the  ground  that  it  is  "pictur- 
esque !" 

Take  now  a  case  where  the  silent  letter  is  justi- 
fied by  etymology.  The  I  in  alms  is  historical, 
but  h»ow  few  there  ar  to  whom  it  is  significant  of 
derivation;  how  few  that  regard  it  in  any  other 
light  than  a  conventional  flurish.  Take  your  city, 
with  its  250,000  or  more  peple,  not  250  of  them, 
not  more  than  25  of  them,  write  the  word  and  read 
it  with  any  consciousness  of  the  origin  of  the  I. 
Must  250,000,  then,  be  compeld  to  lern  just  where 
and  how  to  place  this  I,  which  is  never  sounded,  in 
order  that  25  Greek  scolars  may  hav  the  satisfac- 


SIMPLIFIED  SPELLING  71 

tion  of  being  reminded  of  its  derivation?  Be- 
sides, you  coud  think  of  the  derivation  if  you  cared 
to  just  as  wel  without  the  silent  letter.  In  fact, 
the  I  is  a  mere  fragment  of  the  history  of  the 
word.  Why  not  hav  a  more  complete  and  ampl 
record?  Go  a  litl  further  back  and  we  find  almes; 
a  litl  further,  almesse;  then  almpsen,  almosnay 
almosina,  elemosyna,  until  we  reach  the  Greek 
eleemosune  ( £Asyfjtoffuvy  ) .  There  would  be  sum 
advantage  in  this  fuller  etymological  form.  We 
should  at  least  avoid  in  print  the  puzl  of  the  final 
s,  which  tends  to  bring  the  word  into  use  as  a 
plural,  whereas  it  is  singular,  as  we  see  from  Acts 
iii:  3,  "askt  an  alms,"  and  in  Enoch  Arden — 

"Enoch  set  himself, 
Scorning  an  alms,  to  work  whereby  to  live." 

It  is  fobvious  enuf,  however,  that  words  need  not 
carry  their  hole  history  about  with  them  and  dis- 
play it  at  every  recurrence  on  the  printed  page. 
The  history  of  words  is  recorded  in  literature,  and 
it  is  the  business  of  dictionaries  like  the  Century 
and  the  great  one  of  Dr.  Murray  to  collect  this 
history  and  exhibit  it  in  convenient  form  for  con- 
sultation. It  would  be  a  great  gain  in  furnish- 
ing materials  for  the  history  of  language  if 
sounds  should  cease  to  be  represented  to  the  ey 
when  they  cease  to  be  heard.  If  the  I  in  alms  had 
ceast  to  be  writn  when  it  was  no  longer  pro- 
nounced we  should  be  able  to  mark  that  point  in 


72        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

the  history  of  the  word  with  certainty  for  which 
we  must  now  depend  on  other  and  less  satisfactory 
evidence. 

To  return  for  a  moment  to  the  classification  of 
peple  with  reference  to  the  ease  with  which  they 
read.  It  is  very  far  from  true  that  the  good 
readers  easily  lern  to  spel  and  lern  onse  for  all. 
With  most  of  us  it  is  a  life-long  strugl.  We  ar 
slaves  to  the  dictionary,  and  when  there  is  none 
at  hand  we  turn  our  frazes  so  as  to  avoid  the 
doutful  words.  We  want  to  write  deferd,  but  ar 
not  sure  whether  there  should  be  one  r  or  two,  so 
we  say  postponed.  Like  the  man  who  sent  a  writn 
message  to  his  fysician,  saying,  "Cum  over  im- 
mediately; we  hav  a  very  painful  case  of  small- 
pox at  our  house."  The  doctor  hurried  over  in 
great  alarm,  examind  the  patient,  and  said, 
greatly  relievd,  "It's  not  smallpox;  it's  rheuma- 
tism." "I  knew  it,"  answered  the  man,  "but  there 
wasn't  a  soul  in  the  house  who  coud  spel  rheuma- 
tism." 

We  tamely  submit  to  the  hardships  of  English 
spelling  under  the  mistaken  impression  that  our 
words,  if  not  speld  as  they  ar,  would  not  be  Eng- 
lish words.  Let  us  hope  that  as  a  result  of  these 
conferences  the  lerned  societies  of  Washington, 
and  especialy  the  Anthropological  Society,  may, 
on  the  authority  of  the  filologists,  make  use  of 
amended  spelling  in  their  publications,  and  thus 
aid  in  removing  the  hindrance  offerd  by  unrea- 
soning prejudice. 


VIII 
WILLIAM  CASSIDAY  CATTELL,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

There  have  been  two  heroic  periods  in  the  his- 
tory of  Lafayette  College.  The  one  to  which  we 
look  back  with  the  most  kindly  glow  of  feeling  is 
that  which  culminated  in  the  early  sixties,  when 
our  great  war  was  going  on.  War,  always  bad, 
was  particularly  bad  for  Lafayette  at  that  time, 
for  it  was  one  in  a  series  of  discouraging  strokes. 
The  income  of  the  College  was  rapidly  falling  off, 
the  President  (Dr.  McPhail)  resigned,  the  faculty 
dwindled  away  because  of  the  inability  of  the  au- 
thorities to  pay  their  salaries,  the  students,  what 
few  there  were,  were  scattered,  many  of  them  to 
the  army,  and  in  1863,  the  year  that  General  Lee 
invaded  Pennsylvania,  there  were  no  commence- 
ment exercises  at  all. 

It  became  a  serious  question  whether  the  Col- 
lege could  go  on.  In  this  crisis  a  few  of  the  pro- 
fessors— Professor  Coffin,  Professor  March,  Dr. 
Coleman,  and  Dr.  Eckard — volunteered  to  keep 
the  doors  'open  and  keep  the  classes  going  for  an- 
other year,  satisfied  with  whatever  might  be  forth- 
coming in  the  way  of  salary.  That  was  a  very 

73 


74        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

fitting  action  in  a  place  known  for  "plain  living 
and  high  thinking,"  but,  as  things  go  in  the 
world,  so  uncommon  that  I  call  it  heroic.  Surely 
here  the  nobler  life  of  the  scholar  was  not  stifled 
by  greed.  There  was  no  attempt  here  to  set  up 
the  value  of  the  bread  of  life  where  it  could  be 
measured  by  commercial  standards. 

It  was  a  very  fitting  action  also  to  be  the  start- 
ing-point for  a  career  rof  growth.  These  noble 
men  had  that  reward,  for  it  was  in  that  very  year 
that  the  Board  called  Dr.  Cattell  from  his  church 
in  Harrisburg  to  the  presidency  of  the  College. 
The  clouds  broke  at  once.  Everybody  was  glad. 
Dr.  Cattell  was  already  well  known  here.  He  had 
been  a  professor  in  the  College  for  five  years  be- 
fore 1860,  He  was  known  to  be  a  gifted  man, 
with  the  tastes  and  ambitions  of  a  scholar,  the' 
refinement  of  a  gentleman,  the  tender  sympathies 
of  a  woman,  and  a  strong  man's  force  of  char- 
acter. He  was  bold  to  undertake,  alert  and  active 
to  execute.  He  felt  a  strong  love  for  Lafayette, 
and  put  his  shoulder  under  her  burdens  with  a 
smile  of  confidence  that  brought  hope  to  the  hearts 
of  all  her  friends. 

The  history  of  the  College  records  the  fulfill- 
ment of  that  hope.  From  thirty-nine  students  in 
1863 — there  were  that  many  nominally  on  the 
rolls — the  number  rose  steadily  to  three  hundred 
and  thirty-five  in  1876.  There  was  a  correspond- 
ing increase  in  the  number  of  professors — from 
eight  or  nine  to  twenty-four.  New  courses  of 


WILLIAM  CASSIDAY  CATTELL       75 

instruction  were  soon  added — all  the  technical 
courses  and  the  whole  scientific  department. 

Building  after  building  arose — Jenks  Hall,  the 
Observatory,  the  wings  of  old  South,  dwelling- 
houses  and  dormitories,  with  Pardee  Hall  as  a 
central  charm,  but  last  of  all  the  Gymnasium. 
The  grounds  were  enlarged,  graded,  and  beauti- 
fied. The  Campus  was  like  a  kaleidoscope,  to 
which  every  now  and  then  a  turn  was  given  and 
a  new  combination  of  beauties  flashed  upon  our 
sight.  Dr.  Junkin,  the  first  President,  lived  to 
see  the  fulfillment  of  his  dream  of  "lovely  Lafay- 
ette." In  twelve  years  the  funds  of  the  College 
were  increased  to  something  like  a  million  dollars. 
There  is  not  time  here  to  speak  of  these  benefac- 
tions in  detail,  or  even  to  name  the  givers,  some 
of  whom  are  still  living  and  still  the  firm  friends 
of  Lafayette.  We  never  pass  this  point,  how- 
ever, without  mentioning  one  name,  Mr.  Pardee, 
whose  original  donation  of  twenty  thousand  dol- 
lars gave  the  first  impulse  of  advance,  so  far  as 
that  depended  upon  money.  When  that  check 
came  Dr.  Cattell  was  overwhelmed.  He  had 
worked  for  it,  prayed  for  it,  but  it  was  too  good 
to  be  true.  Mr.  Pardee  later  multiplied  that  gift 
by  twenty,  but  no  money  ever  came  that  caused 
greater  joy  than  that  check  for  twenty  thousand 
dollars. 

Of  course  it  would  be  too  much  to  say  or  imply 
that  Dr.  Cattell  built  up  all  this  upon  nothing. 
There  was  a  college  here  and  had  been  for  more 


76        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

than  thirty  years.  Its  site  was  unexcelled  for 
natural  beauty  and  for  the  convenience  and  suit- 
ableness of  its  surroundings.  It  had  done  much 
good  work  and  was  beginning  to  have  its  honored 
traditions.  It  had  thrown  out  some  strong  roots 
into  the  soil  of  this  "Forks  of  the  Delaware,"  but 
as  yet  had  drawn  through  them  only  a  precari- 
ous support.  There  had  been  and  were  then  here 
some  notable  men  of  science  and  learning — great 
teachers.  Dr.  James  H.  Coffin  was  here,  Dr. 
Traill  Green,  both  of  them  towers  of  strength. 
Dr.  Lyman  Coleman  was  here;  so  was  Dr.  Fran- 
cis A.  March,  a  younger  man  than  any  I  have  yet 
mentioned,  but  Dr.  March  came  early  to  be  a 
master.  Even  at  that  time  he  had  laid  the  foun- 
dations of  that  magnificent  career  in  linguistic 
science  and  educational  work  which  has  long  been 
and  will  ever  be  the  pride  of  this  College.  Pro- 
fessor Youngman  was  here,  a  tutor  then,  vigorous, 
loyal,  and  rising  to  his  high  place  as  a  teacher. 
Dr.  Moore  was  here,  just  graduating,  and  get- 
ting ready  for  the  splendid  work  he  has  since 
done  and  is  still  doing. 

While,  therefore,  those  days  of  '63  were  the 
days  of  small  things  at  Lafayette,  they  were  be- 
ginnings which  had  in  them  infinite  promise.  Dr. 
Cattell  had  the  penetration  to  see  that,  and  the 
ability  to  develop  those  promises  in  all  the  direc- 
tions of  their  prophetic  outlook.  In  those  be- 
ginnings let  me  not  fail  to  note  the  speedy  call- 
ing of  Dr.  Porter,  in  1866,  an  alumnus,  and  now 


WILLIAM  CASSIDAY  CATTELL       77 

a  veteran  in  the  service  of  the  College,  who  has 
endowed  it  with  the  rich  fruits  of  his  scientific 
and  literary  labors ;  and  of  Professor  Bloombergh, 
in  1867,  who  brought  to  us  the  wealth  of  his  Ger- 
man scholarship,  and  has  been  throughout  one  of 
Lafayette's  main  supports  as  a  teacher. 

Such  beginnings  there  were,  such  men  did  Dr. 
Cattell  have  about  him  and  get  about  him,  but 
the  great  force  was  in  the  man  at  the  head.  His 
was  the  impulse,  his  the  directing  energy.  Noth- 
ing was  done  at  random.  Not  a  dollar  was 
added  to  the  endowment,  not  an  acre  of  ground 
to  the  Campus,  not  a  man  to  the  teaching  force, 
not  a  branch  of  study  to  the  curriculum,  not  a 
building  erected,  not  a  path  laid  out  or  a  shade- 
tree  planted,  but  it  had  its  particular  place  in 
the  larger  plan  that  lay  very  definitely  in  Dr. 
Cattell's  mind.  His  purpose  was  to  make  this 
beautiful  place  the  home  of  a  great  and  useful 
institution. 

Scholar  as  he  was,  excellent  preacher  as  he  was, 
it  soon  became  obvious  that  his  best  gifts  lay  in 
the  larger  field  of  administration.  In  the  varied 
work  of  the  College,  in  its  enlarging  sphere,  he 
himself  was  the  heart  and  center  of  it  all. 

Every  department,  whether  technical,  scientific, 
or  literary,  had  his  cordial  sympathy  and  his  full 
support;  and  his  counsel,  kindly  given,  was  al- 
ways judicious  and  enheartening.  Students  and 
professors  alike  felt  a  keen  and  tender  sense  of 
the  presence  of  a  strong  and  loving  leader.  It 


78        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

was  a  master  stroke  of  the  Doctor's,  and  he  made 
a  habit  of  it,  to  foster  favoring  influences  and 
wisely  marshal  their  application. 

As  I  look  back  upon  the  days  when  I  came  to 
college,  in  1868,  I  recall  with  growing  admira- 
tion the  hold  which  that  man  had  upon  this  com- 
munity,— not  the  College  alone;  that  he  seemed 
to  have  in  his  hand  and  to  mold  it  easily  to  his 
desires, — but  this  whole  city.  There  was  a  time 
when  these  cities  belonged  to  Dr.  Cattell,  and 
were  in  a  high  sense  his  for  the  College, — never 
in  his  own  purpose  for  himself.  Every  house 
was  open  to  him,  and  in  many  and  many  a  home 
there  were  men  who  were  his  brothers  and  women 
who  were  his  sisters,  who  welcomed  him  as  they 
would  a  dear  pastor  in  times  of  festivity  or 
sorrow,  who  liked  to  have  him  marry  their  sons 
and  daughters,  a  kind  of  bishop  of  the  town ;  and 
many  a  story  is  quietly  told  of  his  kindly  service 
that  would  be  too  personal  and  too  tender  for 
public  speech. 

A  strong  and  earnest  man,  devoted  as  he  was 
to  a  good  work,  always  gets  a  good  grip.  But 
add  to  these  qualities  a  most  genial  temper,  a 
very  warm  and  sympathetic  heart,  and  an  ir- 
resistible grace  and  courtesy  of  manner,  and  we 
have  a  combination  that  gives  a  wonderful  in- 
crement to  a  man's  usual  forces.  Dr.  Cattell 
used  these  helps  to  the  full.  He  got  friends  for 
the  College  in  that  way, — winning  them  first  to 
himself  and  then  securing  their  interest  in  the 


WILLIAM  CASSIDAY  CATTELL       79 

institution.  "He  had  wondrous  winning  ways," 
says  Donald  G.  Mitchell. 

The  success  and  permanence  of  Lafayette  be- 
came his  one  ambition  and  grew  mightily  in  him. 
He  was  young  enough  and  free  enough  when  he 
came  to  let  it  become  a  controlling  factor  in  his 
career,  to  adapt  himself  to  it,  to  enlist  his  powers 
in  it,  and  let  it  give  a  strong  tinge  to  all  the 
motives  of  his  personal  life.  Add  to  this  the 
fact  that  the  work  was  on  that  higher  level  where 
the  qualities  of  a  man's  spirit  appear  in  what 
he  does,  where  he  puts  the  stamp  of  his  personal 
character  upon  it,  and  you  will  not  wonder  when 
I  remind  you  that  for  years  the  College  was  Dr. 
Cattell  and  Dr.  Cattell  was  the  College. 

Of  that  group  of  noble  men  who  stood  by  him 
as  his  helpers  a  few  only  are  still  with  us,  and  these 
still  at  our  President's  right  hand, — Mr.  Hollen- 
back,  Dr.  Knox,  Dr.  Curwen,  Mr.  Long.  Others 
are  now  fittingly  represented  there  by  their  sons, — 
Dr.  Waller,  Dr.  Hand,  Mr.  Pardee,  Mr.  Adam- 
son,  Mr.  Fox,  Dr.  Green, — as  if  so  noble  a  service 
should  not  be  interfered  with  by  the  limitations 
of  human  life.  Any  of  these  older  men  could  tell 
you  far  better  than  I  can  how  Dr.  Cattell  carried 
this  College  upon  his  heart  to  the  people,  not  only 
extending  and  multiplying'  the  sources  of  her 
help,  but  also  enlarging  the  sphere  of  her  influ- 
ence. 

We  knew  him  better  here  in  his  relations  to 
the  inner  life  of  the  College.  His  thought 


80        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

seemed  to  take  in  easily  every  detail  of  the  great 
work;  his  hand  was  everywhere,  but  with  a  soft 
and  winning  touch;  in  discipline,  if  more  firm, 
it  was  never  hard — always  tender.  There  was 
nothing  like  official  arrogance.  He  came  down 
from  the  presidential  chair  and  sat  by  the  boy. 
I  have  been  present  at  these  interviews  and  heard 
him  talk  to  one  and  another  under  censure.  It 
was  like  the  talk  of  a  father  or  brother  who  loved 
them,  not  upbraiding  them,  or  seeking  to  bring 
home  to  them  a  sense  of  the  badness  of  their  con- 
duct,— they  usually  had  that  already, — but 
speaking  of  the  grace  of  God,  and  reminding 
them  that  all  of  us,  whether  president  or  pro- 
fessor or  pupil,  were  in  perishing  need  of  that 
grace  to  keep  us  right. 

To  discipline  or  have  occasion  to  discipline 
one  of  the  students  was  harder  upon  the  good 
Doctor  than  upon  the  boy ;  harder  upon  the  good 
Doctor,  if  possible,  than  upon  the  boy's  mother. 

And  what  genial  soul  he  was!  Socially  a 
center  too;  ready  and  responsive,  the  delight  of 
every  company  he  entered.  In  those  great  days 
there  was  an  unfailing  flow  of  good  fellowship 
and  good  spirit  from  him.  He  could  mingle  the 
playful  with  the  serious  with  inimitable  grace 
and  with  a  tact  that  had  in  it  a  touch  of 
magic. 

In  the  matter  of  discipline  his  constant  effort 
was  to  prevent  the  occasions  for  it.  He  was  al- 
ways seeking  to  create  and  foster  a  wholesome 


WILLIAM  CASSIDAY  CATTELL       81 

College  sentiment  that  would  frown  upon  and 
prevent  improper  conduct.  In  this  work  he  en- 
listed students  and  teachers  alike.  Events  that 
might  become  occasions  for  discipline — a  class 
supper,  an  annual  sleigh-ride,  or  a  campaign  of 
hazing — were  anticipated  and  controlled  by  bring- 
ing to  bear  upon  all,  and  especially  upon  the 
master  spirits,  an  influence  that  kept  them  within 
bounds. 

In  these  matters  the  use  of  his  persuasive  skill, 
turning  upon  traits  I  have  already  noted,  almost 
amounted  to  a  foible;  I  mean  in  his  habitual  re- 
sort to  it,  and  his  taking  a  kind  of  pride  in  it. 
He  could  wrap  a  committee  of  students  about  his 
linger  like  a  plaything;  with  winning  grace  and 
sparkling  pleasantry  he  would  press  his  point 
even  when  seeming  to  make  concessions,  and  could 
instantly  turn  objections  into  the  persuasive 
points  of  his  own  argument.  The  result  always 
was  that  the  committee  stood  with  the  Doctor, 
but  sometimes  it  was  more  because  they  were 
persuaded  than  because  they  were  thoroughly 
convinced. 

Dr.  Cattell  was,  as  I  have  said,  scholarly  in  his 
tastes  and  ambitions.  He  often  delivered  most 
acceptable  lectures  on  learned  subjects.  He  was 
a  lover  of  the  best  things  in  literature  and  art, 
but  especially  fond  of  the  ancient  classics.  He 
had  made  a  special  study  of  the  original  scrip- 
tures of  the  New  Testament,  both  in  doctrinal 
and  linguistic  directions ;  and  as  for  Latin,  with- 


82        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

out  the  least  indication  of  pedantry,  he  would 
often  quote  a  most  apt  and  telling  passage  from 
Cicero  or  Vergil.  He  frequently  spoke  to  me  of 
his  desire  to  make  an  edition  of  Lactantius,  and 
in  fact  began  it,  but  the  calls  upon  his  time  were 
too  many  to  permit  him  to  finish  it. 

The  Doctor  was  a  good  preacher.  This  had 
originally  been  and  in  some  sense  always  re- 
mained his  life  work.  He  had  profound  convic- 
tions as  a  man  of  God.  He  would  base  all  the 
instruction  of  the  College  upon  Christian  culture, 
with  the  Bible  as  the  foundation.  Always  in  his 
heart  and  always  ready  to  leap  to  his  lips  was  an 
abiding  anxiety  for  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the 
College.  Its  religious  services  were  his,  and  he 
was  never  absent  from  them  when  he  was  in  town ; 
and  never  during  that  time,  so  far  as  I  can  recall, 
did  I  hear  such  an  expression  as  "compulsory  at- 
tendance" of  religious  services, — as  though  there 
were  any  compulsion  about  it !  Prayers  were  a 
part  of  the  life  of  the  institution,  and  always 
should  be,  and  there  was  nothing  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  place  to  suggest  that  it  was  an  un- 
essential part  of  that  life,  and  might  therefore 
just  as  well  be  abolished. 

Dr.  Cattell,  as  I  said,  was  a  fine  preacher.  He 
did  not  compass  (as  what  man  does  or  can  com- 
pass?) all  the  avenues  by  which  spiritual  truth 
finds  its  way  to  the  human  heart ;  but  he  gave 
good  sermons,  ringing  with  sound  doctrine  and 
rounded  with  polished  phrase.  On  certain  levels 


WILLIAM  CASSIDAY  CATTELL       83 

of  earnest  personal  appeal  he  was  well-nigh  ir- 
resistible. 

Such,  in  very  brief  and  inadequate  outline,  was 
the  man  who  was  our  President  for  twenty  years 
—from  1863  to  1883.  It  was  a  period  of 
abounding  life  and  enthusiasm.  The  College 
cheer  was  invented  in  that  period — about  1876 — 
and  the  Campus  began  to  resound  with  its  ring- 
ing La-fay-ette.  The  Doctor  himself  fixed  upon 
the  maroon  and  white  as  the  colors.  Athletics 
began  to  be  cultivated;  College  groups  began  to 
pose  before  the  camera,  and  no  group  was  com- 
plete without  his  genial  face.  Enthusiasm  was 
aroused  by  creating  and  fostering  here  that  which 
could  become  the  center  and  the  object  of  warm 
and  loyal  feeling. 

We  learned  to  think  of  the  College  in  that 
way, — as  a  permanent  institution  not  only,  but 
also  as  a  living  thing  which  appealed  to  and  re- 
sponded to  affection.  The  founders  had  some- 
how breathed  into  it  a  life  of  its  own.  The  Col- 
lege is  a  being  analogous  to  an  organism,  but  of 
a  high  kind:  it  feels,  it  rejoices,  it  hopes,  it  en- 
dures, by  reason  of  the  onflowing  currents  of  its 
own  life.  What  calamities  it  can  suffer  and  still 
survive!  I  could  tell  you  some  of  them;  you 
yourselves  know  some  of  them.  Twice  Pardee 
Hall  has  been  in  ashes,  a  matter  of  no  great  con- 
sequence in  either  case.  We  thought  otherwise 
at  the  time.  We  stood  dumb  when  it  was  burn- 
ing, and  wondered  what  was  going  to  become  of 


84        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

Lafayette.  But  how  easily  we  go  on,  only  a 
little  compression,  a  little  inconvenience  for  a  few 
weeks  or  a  few  months.  Such  a  calamity  does 
harm,  of  course,  but  not  vital  harm.  You  must 
go  deeper  than  the  buildings,  deeper  than  the 
grounds,  deeper  even  than  the  men  who  happen 
to  be  here,  to  make  a  fatal  stroke  at  the  life  of 
the  College.  It  can  stand  abuse;  it  can  endure 
to  be  misrepresented  to  its  public,  to  have  the 
facts  of  its  inner  life  distorted  and  falsified.  It 
can  have  unruly  students  and  still  live.  It  can 
stand  lukewarm  or  even  disloyal  alumni.  It  can 
stand  incompetent  professors,  half  a  dozen  of 
them,  and  still  live;  because  in  the  opera- 
tions of  its  healthy  life  such  errors  will  be  cor- 
rected. 

A  defeat,  for  example  in  an  athletic  contest, 
does  not  do  us  a  hundredth  part  of  the  harm  we 
imagine  it  does ;  nor  does  a  victory  do  us  a  hun- 
dredth part  of  the  good  we  imagine  it  does, — 
that  is,  imagining  on  the  basis  of  our  feeling  at 
the  moment  of  defeat  or  victory.  The  one  factor 
which  we  leave  out  of  the  account  in  these  hurried 
judgments  of  ours  is  the  deep  and  constant  flow 
of  the  College's  life,  so  that  occurrences  on  the 
surface  affect  it  but  slightly.  It  has  had  its 
birth;  it  has  been  fostered  into  vigorous  growth 
and  strength. 

I  speak  of  these  things  because  they  have  a 
special  pertinence  on  an  occasion  like  this. 
Every  man  who  has  lived  here  and  done  a  good 


WILLIAM  CASSIDAY  CATTELL       85 

work  has  made  some  contribution  to  the  spirit  of 
the  institution,  to  its  life. 

What  a  debt  of  gratitude  we  owe  to  the  men 
of  the  early  time  who  planted  and  fostered  this 
growth !  And  what  a  contribution  to  the  life  of 
Lafayette  was  made  by  Dr.  Cattell,  who  poured 
into  the  fund  of  her  vitality  his  thought,  his 
spirit,  and  his  devotion  during  those  twenty  years, 
and  never  ceased  to  cherish  her  to  his  last  hour! 

We  owe  to  him  a  monument.  Each  of  us 
should  rear  in  his  heart  a  memorial  to  Dr.  Cattell, 
and  inscribe  upon  it,  in  grateful  recognition  of 
his  worth,  "A  man  of  God,  thoroughly  furnished 
unto  all  good  works." 


IX 

PROFESSOR  FRANCIS   A.   MARCH.  LL.  D., 
L.H.D. 

It  has  not  been  easy  to  think  of  this  occasion 
as  a  formal  and  stately  memorial  service,  but 
rather  as  a  more  familiar  and  intimate  conference 
suited  to  the  gathering  of  this  larger  family  of 
the  College.  To  all  but  the  most  recent  addi- 
tions to  the  Faculty,  and  to  all  students  but  the 
very  latest  class,  Professor  March  was  a  familiar 
figure,  present  at  all  our  games,  or  strolling 
about  our  campus  or  through  our  streets ;  and 
even  to  those  who  did  not  know  him  as  a  teacher, 
he  was  pointed  out  reverently  and  well  known  as 
"Lafayette's  Grand  Old  Man." 

A  grand  man  indeed!  One  who  has  left  to  us 
the  heritage  of  a  great  life,  and  not  to  us  alone 
here  at  the  College,  but  to  this  community  and 
to  the  world-at-large.  He  was  great  in  many 
directions,  and  many  fields  are  claiming  the  fruit- 
age of  his  labors.  What  a  lawyer  he  would  have 
been !  What  a  legislator !  What  a  Judge  in 
some  great  court !  Indeed  his  first  resort  to 
teaching  was  a  makeshift,  as  often  with  young 

men  of  limited  means,  two  years  at  Leicester  and 

86 


FRANCIS  A.  MARCH  87 

two  at  Amherst.  But  he  had  decided  upon  the 
Law  as  his  profession  and  began  the  study  of  it 
during  this  last  engagement.  His  further  study 
and  early  practice  of  law  was,  however,  inter- 
rupted by  weakened  health  and  he  was  obliged  to 
seek  a  warmer  climate,  settling  at  last  for  a  few 
years  at  Fredericksburg,  Va. 

I  note  these  few  biographical  details  only  to 
indicate  how  it  was  that  he  came  to  Lafayette. 
Dr.  McPhail  was  the  principal  of  the  Academy  in 
which  he  was  teaching  in  Fredericksburg,  and  Dr. 
McPhail  was  soon  called  to  the  pastorate  of  the 
Brainerd  church,  Easton,  and  a  little  later  was 
made  President  of  the  College.  He  knew  this 
Francis  A.  March  as  a  teacher  and  called  him  to 
Lafayette  as  a  tutor  in  1855,  and  two  years 
later  that  tutor  was  made  Professor  of  the  Eng- 
lish Language  and  Comparative  Philology. 

It  was  the  fashion  then  in  the  progressive  in- 
stitutions to  recognize  Comparative  Philology  as 
worthy  of  a  place  among  the  departments,  or  to 
share  in  a  place.  Usually  it  was  Sanskrit  and 
Comparative  Philology,  as  at  Yale  and  Harvard. 
It  was  the  study  of  Sanskrit  about  100  years 
ago  that  opened  up  the  comparative  study  of 
languages.  Few  people  knew  much  about  the 
Sanskrit,  but  it  seemed  a  fitting  thing  to  place 
this  venerable  speech  and  literature  of  India,  with 
Comparative  Philology,  in  some  dignified  emi- 
nence upon  a  pedestal  in  great  institutions  of 
learning.  It  was  therefore  a  bold  innovation 


88        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

on  the  part  of  the  authorities  at  Lafayette  to 
bring  this  science  of  Language  down  to  the  level 
of  this  modern  vernacular  of  ours.  But  the  in- 
novation was  soon  justified,  for  within  a  few  years 
it  was  evident  that  Professor  March,  instead  of 
lowering  Comparative  Philology,  had  raised  the 
English  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  with  their  splendid 
classic  literatures  to  the  high  level  of  the  sister- 
hood of  the  Indo-European  tongues. 

He  had  heard  lectures  of  Noah  Webster  and 
had  been  under  the  instruction  of  Professor  W.  C. 
Fowler,  author  of  what  has  always  seemed  to  me 
the  best  English  Grammar  we  have ;  and  he  had 
ideas  of  his  own  about  the  teaching  of  English — 
a  philological  method.  There  was  then  talk,  and 
there  has  since  been  a  good  deal  more  of  it — that 
we  should  read  Latin  and  Greek  as  we  read  Eng- 
lish. Professor  March's  idea  was  that  we  should 
read  English  as  we  do  Latin  and  Greek!  That 
is,  with  minute  and  critical  inquiry  into  words, 
not  only  their  history  and  forms  and  uses,  but 
the  laws  of  speech  and  the  laws  of  thought,  and 
all  that  is  pertinent  in  geography  and  mythology 
and  history — the  history  of  the  times  and  the 
history  of  the  race. 

For  his  students  and  for  the  teachers  that  were 
soon  turned  out  by  scores  and  hundreds,  who  were 
competent  to  conduct  the  teaching  of  English  in 
a  similar  way,  text-book  were  needed  and  within 
a  few  years  came  the  "Method  of  Philological 
Study  of  the  English  Language,"  the  "Parser 


FRANCIS  A.  MARCH  89 

and  Analyser,"  and  soon,  the  "Anglo-Saxon 
Reader,"  and  then  the  "Comparative  Grammar 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Language,"  a  book  that  made 
an  epoch  in  the  progress  of  linguistic  Science. 

The  elements  of  the  curriculum  soon  began  to 
bend  toward  and  find  their  unity  in  this  course. 
All  the  language  studies  in  particular  reached 
their  solid  coherence  in  being  so  adjusted  as  to 
contribute,  each  in  its  own  way,  to  the  applica- 
tion of  Comparative  Philology.  Professor  March 
rose  to  be  a  peer  of  the  Masters  in  this,  the  men 
under  whose  inspiration  he  caught  his  first  im- 
pulse, Professor  Max  Miiller,  Jacob  Grimm,  Fran- 
cis Bopp  and  George  Curtius. 

To  accomplish  such  a  work  in  a  special  field 
might  well  be  the  height  of  a  scholar's  ambition, 
but  we  must  not  stop  here.  There  are  endow- 
ments that  give  the  great  and  wise  man  freedom 
in  all  fields.  We  find  our  scholar  not  only  fore- 
most in  English  and  Comparative  Philology  but 
taking  high  rank  as  a  clear  and  profound  thinker 
and  worker  in  other  directions :  in  Philosophy, 
in  Pedagogy,  in  Natural  Science,  in  Lexicog- 
raphy, in  Law.  From  time  to  time  as  needed  he 
had  classes  in  Greek  and  Latin  and  in  the  modern 
languages ;  for  years  in  political  economy,  and  in 
Psychology  to  the  end  of  his  active  life. 

Indeed  his  influence  was  felt  throughout  the 
teaching  and  governing  forces  of  the  College, 
molding  its  curriculum,  its  discipline,  its  policy, 
its  educational  methods. 


90        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

The  presidents  leaned  upon  him.  Dr.  Mc- 
Phail,  Dr.  Cattell  for  twenty  years,  Dr.  Knox, 
and  Dr.  Warfield,  and  no  president  ever  had  a 
more  loyal  colleague.  On  any  important  subject 
of  faculty  action,  he  would  clearly  state  his  views, 
and  if  the  president  hesitated  to  agree  with  him, 
and  still  hesitated  to  take  a  course  in  opposition 
— I  recall  one  memorable  instance  of  the  kind  in 
the  best  days  of  Dr.  Cattell — Professor  March 
quietly  remarked  to  the  great  relief  of  the  presi- 
dent, that  he  thought  it  his  duty  to  state  his 
views  frankly  in  conference,  but  if  the  president 
wished  to  adopt  a  different  policy,  it  was  for 
him  to  recognize  that  there  might  well  be  more 
wise  ways  than  one  of  meeting  a  crisis ;  and  when 
the  president  chose  a  course,  it  was  for  him  to 
fall  in  and  do  his  utmost  in  helping  to  carry  it 
out. 

Then  in  the  sixties  came  that  great  expansion 
in  the  study  of  the  sciences,  the  applied  sciences, 
our  Technical  courses.  They  came  in  response 
to  the  needs  of  our  industrial  environment — this 
busiest  end  of  the  old  Keystone  State.  Note 
right  here  at  the  Forks  of  the  Delaware,  the  net- 
work of  railway  tracks,  and  the  bridges  that  span 
our  streams,  the  mineral  resources  near  by  that 
must  find  an  exit  here,  and  the  many  enterprises 
of  manufacture  whose  success  depends  upon  the 
results  of  the  nicest  chemical  analysis. 

Of  course  there  were  other  competent  men  here 
to  ajd  in  this  new  departure — Dr.  Cattell  himself 


FRANCIS  A.  MARCH  91 

at  the  head  of  it,  alert  and  keen-eyed,  inspected 
technological  institutions  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic;  Professor  James  H.  Coffin,  a  master  in 
his  department  of  physics  and  astronomy,  and  a 
brilliant  pioneer  in  meteorology ;  Dr.  Traill  Green, 
with  a  wide  reputation  as  a  physician  and  a  chem- 
ist ;  Dr.  Thomas  C.  Porter,  an  authority  in  botany, 
and  well  versed  in  other  natural  sciences ;  but 
every  one  of  these  would  say  what  I  now  say,  that 
in  the  organization  of  these  courses  and  in  that 
whole  period  of  expansion  as  throughout,  our 
genius  in  education  has  been  Dr.  Francis  A. 
March. 

But  in  dwelling  upon  these  broader  aspects  of 
educational  work,  all  Lafayette  men  will  feel  that 
I  am  missing  the  main  point — Professor  March 
as  a  teacher  in  the  class-room. 

We  thought  him  great  in  every  field  of  learn- 
ing. We  might  have  been  mistaken  in  that,  but 
in  the  weight  and  power  of  his  personality  we 
made  no  mistake.  We  made  no  mistake  in  think- 
ing him  a  wise  man.  That  may  include  high  at- 
tainments in  learning,  but  beyond  that  we  think 
of  his  profound  discernment,  of  his  judgment, 
sensitive  to  the  guidance  of  conscience,  coupled 
with  a  noble  rectitude — absolute  intellectual  and 
moral  integrity;  then  his  fortitude — Cicero's 
fortis  atque  constans — not  however  the  stoical 
attitude  of  mere  resolute  submission  to  fate,  but 
the  nobler  fortitude  of  a  Christian  faith  in  mat- 
ters pertaining  to  God,  and  of  a  clear  and  great 


92        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

understanding  in  dealing  with  the  problems 
which  our  life  imposes  as  the  tasks  of  our  intelli- 
gence. 

He  impressed  us  as  so  simply  yet  so  grandly 
sincere.  What  he  stated  to  us  seemed  the  solid 
truth,  clear  in  its  statement  and  convincing,  not 
by  any  show  of  wisdom,  but  by  its  very  breadth 
and  finality.  In  the  class-room  the  subject  was 
something,  the  text-book  something,  but  the  man 
was  everything.  He  dealt  with  great  subjects — 
in  their  elementary  aspects  of  course,  but  even 
there  the  clear  depth  was  always  revealed,  and 
earnest  students  soon  caught  the  habit  of  wait- 
ing for  his  least  word  of  explanation  with  bated 
breath. 

To  students  of  his,  his  personal  influence  on 
young  men  will  appear  to  be  his  greatest  achieve- 
ment. To  win  young  men  is  a  most  fruitful  form 
of  success — to  help  them  discover  their  capacities, 
and  learn  how  to  use  them,  to  inspire  them  with 
principles,  and  so  come  to  their  moral  rescue  at 
a  critical  time,  to  help  them  often  to  specific  pro- 
fessional equipment — lawyers,  ministers,  journal- 
ists, business  men,  teachers — hundreds  of  them 
have  gone  out  from  Lafayette  College,  who  have 
caught  their  most  vital  inspiration  from  him, 
and  so  far  as  possible  his  method  and  the  quality 
of  his  spirit. 

He  taught  men  to  think.  He  kindled  in  them 
the  love  of  truth,  and  then  when  their  interest 
was  aroused,  would  furnish  their  minds  by  the 


FRANCIS  A.  MARCH  93 

ministration  to  them  of  the  judgments  of  his  own 
maturer  wisdom.  And  how  modestly  he  would 
do  it !  One  might  think  it  much  more  important 
from  his  attitude,  that  the  class  should  hear  what 
some  student  thought  about  the  subject,  than 
what  he  thought.  Always  himself  a  learner,  and 
a  humble  one,  no  matter  what  was  the  source  of 
the  knowledge.  "Never  a  pair  of  eyes  made  that 
were  not  well  worth  looking  through,"  he  said. 

Then  a  man  of  high  standards  of  conduct  and 
duty ;  one  who  with  ease  and  confidence  though 
with  humility  could  walk  out  into  the  light  of  the 
divine  requirement  and  measure  the  items  of  our 
human  life  with  true  measurements ;  not  an  easy 
thing  to  do,  so  many  little  standards  that  we  ap- 
ply to  ourselves,  comparing  ourselves  with  our- 
selves or  with  others,  that  when  we  see  one  in 
greatness  and  simplicity  of  soul  come  out  strong 
and  square  himself  up  to  truth  and  God's  stand- 
ard— that's  a  man  who  lays  hold  of  us  with  the 
power  of  those  who  walk  in  high  places;  and  if, 
as  it  is  said,  99  out  of  every  100  moral  questions 
of  life  are  to  be  decided  in  college,  it  is  a  grand 
thing  for  a  student  to  have  in  any  way  the  lifting 
fellowship  of  such  a  nature.  No  man  who  knows 
Professor  March  and  has  sympathetic  apprecia- 
tion of  him,  can  think  of  him  and  then  turn  and 
decide  weakly  or  meanly  any  question  of  life's 
morals. 

Professor  March  was  a  diligent  worker,  took 
upon  himself  arduous  tasks,  but  worked  easily, 


94        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

"with  free  mind"  as  he  would  say,  and  even  in 
his  hours  of  leisure  was  far  from  idle,  being  much 
given  to  easy  and  cheerful  brooding. 

I  say  cheerful  that  you  may  not  think  of  it  as 
moodiness.  "Simmering  of  thought"  he  called  it. 
He  would  walk  up  and  down,  or  latterly,  sit  at 
some  of  these  points  of  vantage  where  there  is  a 
fine  view,  of  which  there  are  many  here  about  us 
— and  thus  leisurely  taking  the  scene  in,  and  thus 
filling  the  currents  of  his  life  with  the  best  that 
nature  could  give  would  think — not  aimless  and 
random  thoughts — but  of  some  definite  subject, 
with  some  definite  aim.  It  was  his  theory  of 
productive,  and  I  may  say  of  creative  thought, 
that,  with  open  mind  and  its  processes  gently  di- 
rected in  definite  channels,  letting  the  unforced 
activities  of  the  mind  flow  easily  on,  that  is  the 
condition  in  which  a  man  does  his  best  intellectual 
work. 

He  pondered  much  thus  upon  the  unsolved 
problems  of  language,  its  origin,  growth,  and 
changes.  On  one  occasion  he  spoke  to  me  of  a 
group  of  facts  in  our  own  language,  hitherto  un- 
explained, and  said  that  he  had  thought  more 
about  it  than  about  any  other  subject  except, 
perhaps,  some  of  the  great  moral  questions.  He 
solved  it  too,  and  the  solution  stands  unchallenged 
in  his  Anglo-Saxon  Grammar. 

I  speak  of  it  here  only  as  a  hint  of  his  mental 
methods.  It  is  well  worth  knowing  how  such  a 
man  gets  hold  of  truth  and  forms  conclusions. 


FRANCIS  A.  MARCH  S5 

He  reached  truth  by  keen  and  accurate  ob- 
servation and  by  patient  thought.  Facts  would 
lie  clear  and  true  on  his  eye,  in  their  even  value 
and  relations,  without  any  hindrance  of  distrac- 
tion, or  any  intervening  medium  of  prejudice;  and 
his  sense  went  straight  to  the  critical  point  of 
inquiry. 

Then  he  who  notes  truly  the  relations  of  facts 
will  be  able  to  organize  the  separate  items  of 
knowledge  and  arrive  at  laws  and  principle. 
This  is  a  rarer,  a  larger,  and  a  nobler  work  inas- 
much as  in  promoting  the  welfare  of  men,  ideas 
and  principles  have  a  value  far  exceeding  the 
value  of  facts.  In  Dr.  March's  case  we  come 
to  this  highest  level  of  scholarly  activity.  He 
was  a  "worker  for  progress,"  "devoted  to  the  con- 
quest of  nature,  the  discovery  of  truth,  and  the 
welfare  of  the  race."  He  looked  out  intelligently 
upon  the  busy  world  and  knew  the  needs  of  men ; 
and  while  he  felt  to  the  full  the  charms  of  erudi- 
tion, his  aim  and  his  delight  in  scholarly  pursuits 
was  to  do  work  whose  results  contained  the  prom- 
ise of  utility.  That  is  the  golden  motive  of  the 
"scholar  of  to-day." 

It  was  at  his  initiative  that  scholars  and  edu- 
cators of  England  and  America  took  up  the  en- 
terprise of  simplifying  our  English  orthography. 
That  was  in  the  early  seventies  when  he  was,  for 
the  first  time,  President  of  the  American  Philo- 
logical Association.  Eminent  professors  and  edu- 
cators rallied  around  him,  an  association  was 


96        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

formed  of  which  he  was  President,  and  an  Inter- 
national Association  in  1876,  and  in  the  course 
of  a  few  years  the  scholars  here  and  in  England 
had  done  their  work  under  the  leadership  of  Pro- 
fessor March;  that  is,  they  had  clearly  pointed 
out  the  need,  the  method,  and  the  processes  of 
the  reform,  and  had  provided  a  suitable  alphabet 
and  a  long  list  of  words,  about  four  thousand, 
in  which  the  simplification  might  well  begin. 
What  remained  to  do  was  to  overcome  ignorant 
prejudice,  mountains  of  it!  It  was  not  the  work 
of  a  day,  or  a  year,  and  the  progress  already 
made  and  still  being  made,  quiet  but  substantial 
and  even  rapid,  justifies  the  sublime  faith  of  the 
leader  that  these  mountains  could  be  removed. 

Those  who  have  been  his  students  find  them- 
selves, as  the  years  pass,  under  a  deepening  sense 
of  their  obligation  to  Professor  March.  They 
speak  of  it  in  quiet  tones  of  reverence — not  very 
definitely  often — not  so  much  his  teaching  of  Eng- 
lish, or  Psychology,  as  something  in  HIM.  It  is 
not  easy  to  speak  definitely  of  the  influence  of 
personality. 

We  must  here  take  into  account  that  transfer 
of  power  from  life  to  life,  those  intellectual  and 
spiritual  contagions  by  which  the  strong  impart 
themselves  to  others. 

The  ideal  situation  for  this  transfer  is  that  of 
discipleship.  There  is  no  dream  of  the  mystic 
that  is  not  realized  in  the  working  of  mind  upon 
mind  and  spirit  upon  spirit  in  this  relation.  Our 


FRANCIS  A.  MARCH  97 

finest  experiences  come  to  us  in  this  way — the 
joys  of  discovery  in  the  intellectual  world,  the 
sense  of  added  power  in  the  realm  of  personal 
force.  There's  healing  in  it,  there's  new  birth 
in  it.  When  it  comes  at  the  word  or  the  look  of 
the  greatest  of  teachers,  when  the  hem  of  his  gar- 
ment is  touched  and  the  flow  of  blood  is  staunched, 
we  call  it  miracle,  and  so  it  is ;  but  it  is  a  miracle 
which  in  its  lesser  manifestation  recurs  in  our 
daily  experience.  There  is  a  teacher's  touch  at 
which  the  scales  fall  from  the  eyes,  and  the  blind 
receive  their  sight ;  and  many  an  Elisha  takes  the 
mantle  of  the  master,  and  with  it  parts  the  hin- 
dering elements,  making  a  way  for  himself,  in 
which  he  walks  in  the  strength  and  in  the  spirit 
of  the  greater  man  who  taught  him.  Such  was 
the  influence  of  Socrates — not  so  much  that  he 
taught  men  though  he  did  teach  them,  as  that  he 
inspired  them;  and  of  Scaevola — -not  so  much  for 
the  soundness  of  his  legal  responses,  as  for  the 
character  of  the  man  inspiring  a  confidence  that 
nothing  could  shake. 

We  name  in  this  connection  our  great  modern 
teachers,  Dr.  Arnold,  Dr.  Nott,  Dr.  Hopkins  and 
others  and  we  add  to  it  the  name  of  Dr.  March, 
rich  in  the  treasures  of  mind,  strong  in  convic- 
tion, with  a  sincerity  and  a  force  of  character 
that  gave  weight  to  his  every  word,  and  that 
made  his  very  presence  a  benediction.  He  gath- 
ered class  after  class  about  him,  became  venerable 
in  the  work,  and  lived  and  still  lives  under  a 


98        HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

widening  halo  of  tender  memories.  I  think  of 
him  often  as  a  noble  freeman  in  the  commonwealth 
of  intelligence,  associating  there  with  the  great 
of  all  ages,  uplifted  by  their  fellowship,  thinking 
their  thoughts,  warmed  by  their  sentiments  and 
cheered  by  their  hopes. 

He  has  often  spoken  to  me  of  Scipio's  vision, 
that  rarest  gem  of  ancient  literature,  and  I  have 
sometimes  wondered,  without  quite  daring  to  ask 
him,  what  special  feature  of  it  pleased  him  most; 
whether  that  little  drama  of  the  human  life  con- 
tinued in  the  starry  world,  where  the  younger 
Scipio  talks  with  Africanus  and  presently  asks, 
"Is  my  father  Paulus  here  ?"  "Why,  yes  ;  do  you 
not  see  him  coming  to  you  now?"  And  the  boy 
turns  and  rushes  into  the  embrace  of  his  father, 
pouring  out  as  he  says  "a  flood  of  tears" ;  or 
whether  the  Platonic  argument  for  immortality. 
Hardly  that,  however,  for  Professor  March 
would  not  need  Plato's  argument  though  he  might 
admire  it;  or  perhaps  the  vast  expanses  of  the 
starry  universe.  At  one  point  they  are  trans- 
ported as  in  the  speed  of  thought  to  the  radiant 
circle  of  the  milky  way,  and  from  there  look 
back;  but  the  earth  and  all  the  planets  and  their 
sun  have  dwindled  to  a  mere  point  scarcely  visible. 
I  think  I  have  noted  that  his  eyes  would  brighten 
at  that ;  or  whether  the  divine  mission  of  our  hu- 
man life,  for  the  lad  would  stay  with  his  father 
even  as  Peter  would  have  stayed  on  the  Mount  of 
Transfiguration.  "Not  so,"  says  Paulus,  "lest 


FRANCIS  A.  MARCH  99- 

you  seem  to  shirk  the  human  service  to  which 
God  has  assigned  you";  and  then  talked  to  him 
of  his  high  duties  to  men. 

I  am  sure  that  no  ideals  were  more  firmly  held 
or  more  tenderly  cherished  by  Professor  March 
than  his  ideal  of  loyal  service  to  humanity.  We 
have  heard  him  read  the  strong  words  of  appeal 
on  this  very  subject  in  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  and  have 
seen  how  deeply  they  affected  him.  The  lip  would 
soon  quiver,  the  eyes  moisten,  the  voice  falter  and 
the  hands  so  tremble  that  he  could  hardly  hold 
the  book.  He  could  think  big  thoughts  and  thrill 
with  fine  sentiments.  He  lived  very  near  if  not 
well  within  the  margins  of  that  realm  whose 
mighty  realities  hover  over  us,  whether  we  know 
it  or  not,  and  whose  forces  are  the  forces  of 
spirit  and  of  truth. 


X 

PROFESSOR  MARCH 

Your  president  has  asked  me  to  say  a  few  words 
about  Professor  March.  The  time  is  too  short 
for  more  than  one  or  two  glimpses,  and  these  had 
better  be  in  the  way  of  reminiscence. 

Of  course  we  feel  not  a  little  pride  in  the  great- 
ness and  fame  of  our  "grand  old  man" ;  and  I 
would  emphasize  that  last — his  fame,  because  a 
few  months  ago  at  the  time  of  his  death,  some 
of  the  papers,  especially  here  in  your  own  city 
spoke  with  some  discouragement  about  it.  One 
of  the  best  editorials  I  saw,  in  the  main  substance 
of  it,  was  headed  "An  unappreciated  scholar." 

It  never  would  have  occurred  to  me  to  think  of 
Professor  March  as  unappreciated.  He  had 
most  sincere  and  discriminating  recognition, — at 
home  in  his  own  city  even  popular  recognition. 
When  we  set  aside  a  Founder's  Day  to  honor  him, 
as  we  did  a  few  years  ago,  the  city  of  Easton 
joined  us  most  enthusiastically.  The  schools 
were  closed  so  that  teachers  and  children  could 
come  to  the  hill ;  the  Mayor  and  the  city  councils 
came  in  a  body ;  the  stores  were  closed  at  certain 

hours  and  business  men  and  citizens  thronged  to 
100 


PROFESSOR  MARCH  101 

the  college;  the  Board  of  Trade  came  in  a  body 
and  so  of  other  civic  organizations  and  the  fire- 
men made  it  a  day  of  parade.  So  popularly ;  but 
in  educational  and  scholarly  circles  he  was  held 
in  highest  appreciation.  For  years  he  was  easily 
our  foremost  linguistic  scholar  and  was  twice 
president  of  the  American  Philological  Associa- 
tion. The  English  universities  gave  him  most 
distinguished  honors  and  savants  on  the  conti- 
nent, especially  in  Germany  were  singing  his 
praises  in  a  long  chorus. 

But  his  fame  is  not  our  first  or  dearest  thought 
even  now;  and  certainly  was  not  when  we  came 
to  college  twenty,  thirty,  or  forty  years  ago. 

He  was  famous  even  then.  He  had  published 
two  or  three  articles  on  philosophy  in  the  early 
sixties  and  they  were  within  a  few  weeks  reprinted 
in  Edinburgh  and  made  the  Scotch  and  English 
philosophers  sit  up  and  rub  their  eyes,  and  even 
in  France  their  great  philosopher  Cousin 
promptly  sent  to  Professor  March  a  request  that 
he  be  the  editor  of  the  American  edition  of  his 
works. 

Yet  it  was  not  his  fame  as  I  said,  that  we 
thought  of  first,  but  that  we  should  go  to  his 
class-room  Tuesday,  Wednesday,  Friday  and 
Saturday,  at  8  o'clock  and  perhaps  at  other  pe- 
riods of  the  week.  Those  were  glorious  hours, 
long  to  be  remembered!  His  masterly  develop- 
ment of  subject  matter  from  the  text-book, — it 
didn't  much  matter  what  the  text-book  was — any 


102      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

old  edition  of  Demosthenes,  De  Corona,  any  old 
text-book  on  the  constitution,  or  mental  philoso- 
phy— Haven  of  all  things  in  the  world!  The 
modern  psychologist  comes  along  and  pushes  it 
out  as  stuff;  and  rightly  too,  for  the  method  of 
studying  psychology  is  very  different  from  that 
of  forty  years  ago.  But  we  had  the  man  and  the 
book  did  not  matter.  He  opened  for  us  the  gates 
of  thought,  not  merely  that  we  might  look  within 
but  that  we  might  walk  within.  He  taught  us 
to  think.  There  was  a  directness  and  simplicity 
in  his  method.  We  must  stick  to  the  main  point 
— never  dodge  the  main  issue  and  if  we  halted  or 
had  difficulty  he  would  encourage  us  and  guide 
our  faltering  steps.  Those  were  strenuous  hours, 
hours  of  conquest  and  all  the  pleasures  of  it,  the 
joys  of  discovery  in  the  world  of  the  intellect  and 
the  sense  of  added  power  in  the  realm  of  personal 
force.  The  hours  were  too  short  for  us.  Do 
you  remember  how  we  lingered  in  the  room  when 
the  period  ended,  not  to  interview  the  Professor, 
but  from  sheer  reluctance  to  leave  the  place? 

And  how  patient  he  was !  and  kindly  and  help- 
ful. Earnest  students  found  in  him  most  ready 
sympathy  and  aid  in  all  their  difficulties ;  indiffer- 
ent and  indolent  ones  also  got  what  they  needed 
and  deserved,  rebuke.  So  tempered  with  kindness 
often  that  the  boy  didn't  feel  the  sting  of  it  until 
he  had  had  time  to  think  it  over;  then  he  might 
feel  a  pricking  under  the  fifth  rib,  not  fatal 
though  it  felt  so,  but  in  the  end  salutary. 


PROFESSOR  MARCH  103 

I  remember  an  instance  when  we  were  having 
a  class  conversation  on  culture  and  the  studies 
that  promote  it.  One  fellow  blurted  out  rather 
recklessly,  "All  studies  are  culture  studies."  The 
Professor's  eyes  twinkled  a  moment,  then  his  face 
quickly  sobered  and  nodding  his  head  slowly,  he 
said,  "So,  so ;  then  you  are  using  the  word  culture 
in  a  sense  that  is  unknown  to  me."  That  might 
be  a  confession  of  ignorance  and  the  fellow  might 
at  first  throw  out  his  chest  in  conceit  thinking, 
"Now  I  have  arrived,  for  I  have  found  a  meaning 
of  culture  that  Professor  March  did  not  know." 
But  surely  a  little  reflection  would  bring  out  that 
saving  sting  and  if  he  went  to  his  dictionary  for 
definitions  of  culture,  if  he  turned  to  his  books 
to  read  about  it,  and  to  his  fellow  students  and 
the  professors  to  talk  about  it, — if  by  any  means 
he  came  to  the  first  gleams  of  that  truth  that  cul- 
ture is  not  knowledge  or  training,  but  is  the  re- 
finement of  intelligence  and  of  taste  and  of  life 
and  that  if  one  get  it,  he  gets  it  by  mastering  the 
thoughts  of  men  whose  thoughts  have  moved  and 
are  moving  the  world,  by  the  ability  to  appreciate 
the  creations  of  men  whose  work  represents  the 
best  in  art,  and  by  winning  to  his  intellectual  and 
moral  make-up  the  best  in  human  life, — 
if  I  say,  he  came  to  the  first  gleam  of 
these  realizations,  he  achieved  that  which  in 
itself  represents  a  value  far  above  the  cost  of  his 
whole  college  course.  Such  was  very  often  the 
value  of  his  keen,  though  kindly  rebukes. 


104      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

I  remember  one  occasion  when  he  administered 
such  a  correction  to  a  whole  class.  Thursday 
mornings  at  eight,  the  whole  college  went  to  him 
for  "Elocution."  There  would  be  declamations 
by  a  few  members  each  of  the  three  lower  classes 
and  short  original  orations  by  a  few  seniors. 
When  the  first  of  the  Juniors  had  spoken  there 
was  generous  applause  to  which  the  freshmen, 
present  for  the  first  time,  added  a  noisy  stamp- 
ing of  feet.  When  it  ceased  Professor  March 
said,  "I  would  request  the  new  students  not  to 
applaud  with  the  feet.  We  don't  do  that  here." 
Giving  little  heed  to  this  request,  the  class,  at  the 
conclusion  of  the  next  declamation,  repeated  the 
offensive  clatter  of  feet  and  the  Professor  quietly 
remarked,  "I  asked  you  not  to  applaud  with  your 
feet.  If  you  are  not  sufficiently  interested  in  a 
speech  to  keep  still  when  it's  ended,  clap  your 
hands !" 

I  said  a  moment  ago  that  he  taught  us  to 
think;  but  there  must  be  food  for  thought  and 
first  of  all  he  taught  us  to  read.  We  could  run 
over  the  lines  and  pages  glibly  enough,  but  we 
got  so  little  from  them.  Working  with  Professor 
March  we  soon  saw  that  when  an  author  has  writ- 
ten out  his  thought,  any  word  in  that  text  may 
be  a  gold  mine. 

Well  do  I  remember  our  first  recitation  with 
him,  in  Trench  "on  the  study  of  words."  The 
first  lesson  had  been  announced:  "the  Preface." 
"The  Preface  indeed!"  we  thought, — we  sopho- 


PROFESSOR  MARCH  105 

mores  who  had  acquired  all  the  learning  in  sight 
and  were  crying  out  for  more  worlds  to  conquer, 
were  we  to  be  started  out  with  a  "preface"? 

We  thought  that  an  author  might  dawdle  in 
his  preface — play  with  his  subject;  so  also  with 
the  introductory  lecture.  What  we  wanted  was 
to  plunge  at  once  into  the  very  thick  of  his  sub- 
ject-matter. So  with  some  indifference  we  opened 
that  preface — those  three  or  four  pages  of 
coarser  print  than  the  rest  of  the  volume. 

How  easy  and  simple  it  was !  We  knew  it  at 
a  glance  and  soon  finished  our  preparation ;  but 
the  next  morning  at  recitation  we  found  that  we 
knew  nothing  about  it.  What  did  we  know  of 
the  "Diversions  of  Purleigh"?  What  did  we 
know  of  the  mistakes  of  Horn  Tooke  or  of  the  fine 
figure  of  Coleridge — that  speech  is  like  amber,  .not 
only  in  its  efficacy  to  circulate  the  electric  spirit 
of  truth,  but  also  in  embalming  and  preserving 
the  relics  of  ancient  wisdom.  But  we  didn't  get 
as  far  as  that,  floundering  rather  in  the  first  page 
or  two  of  that  simple  preface, — learning  to  read. 
We  were  to  learn  it  from  his  methods  of  handling 
a  subject  and  from  what  he  required  of  us.  His 
first  question  was,  "What  is  the  first  thought  in 
the  preface"?  So  we  were  to  read  by  thoughts. 

The  opening  sentences  seemed  easy — about  the 
original  audience,  and  the  changes  required  to 
adapt  the  lectures  to  a  larger  circle ;  little  trou- 
ble here  except  with  the  puzzle  of  "those  rather 
than  these" ;  but  when  we  came  to  the  statement 


106      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

that  "for  many  a  young  man  his  first  discovery 
that  words  are  living  powers,  has  been  like  the 
dropping  of  scales  from  his  eyes,  like  the  acquir- 
ing of  another  sense,  or  the  introduction  into  a 
new  world,"  there  we  met  our  Waterloo.  "What 
does  Trench  mean  by  'words  are  living  powers,' 
Mr.  McKnight?"  McKnight  arose,  blushed, 
rested  his  hands  on  the  bench  before  him,  wrin- 
kled his  brow,  and  made  a  guess  wide  of  the  mark 
evidently,  for  without  comment  the  Professor 
called  Mr.  Wiely.  "Words  are  living  powers, 
Mr.  Wiely?"  Wiely,  impulsive,  just  then  rather 
incoherent,  stammered  something  that  did  not  de- 
lay us  long,  for  immediately  Mr.  Harris  was 
called  and  Wiely  sat  down.  "Living  powers,  Mr. 
Harris?"  "A  figure  of  speech,"  said  Harris. 
"Ah."  And  we  thought  Harris  had  scored. 
"Please  explain  the  figure."  His  explanation 
did  not  make  it  clear,  and  with  a  merry  twinkle 
of  the  eye  the  Professor  said,  "You  had  better 
consider  it  plain  speech,  not  figurative;  living 
powers,  Mr.  Hudson?"  And  Harris  took  his 
seat.  So  with  Hudson  and  Bradley,  and  Owen 
and  Douglass.  We  were  called  by  lot  and  awaited 
our  turns  with  some  trepidation  now,  wondering 
too  why  it  had  not  occurred  to  us  to  think  of  all 
this  and  prepare  for  it.  Then  Lewis  was  called. 
"Powers,  Mr.  Lewis;  are  words  powers  at  all?" 
"And  what  does  that  mean?"  Here  was  a  ray 
of  light  and  a  simpler  beginning;  a  new  advance 
also  in  the  process  of  teaching  us  to  read.  First, 


PROFESSOR  MARCH  107 

read  by  thoughts ;  secondly,  when  you  come  to  a 
complex  thought,  analyze  it.  Lewis  was  of  opin- 
ion that  words  are  powers,  and  by  hints  and  helps 
here  and  there,  he  and  others  brought  out  pretty 
clearly  that  words  convey  from  mind  to  mind 
ideas,  arguments,  reasons,  influences,  and  so  are 
powers.  "To  return  to  'living'  powers,  Mr. 
Watkins,  what  does  he  mean  by  'living'?" 
"Clear,  vivid."  "Clear  means  bright  by  deriva- 
tion. Is  a  thing  alive  if  it  is  bright?"  "No,  sir, 
not  necessarily."  "Then  'clear'  will  not  help  us. 
What  does  'vivid'  mean?"  Watkins  hesitated. 
"What  is  its  derivation?"  Watkins  still  hesi- 
tated, so  while  he  stood,  the  question  was  referred 
to  others  informally,  and  it  was  soon  found  that 
by  etymology  "vivid"  means  "living,"  not  an  ex- 
planation but  another  word  meaning  the  same 
thing.  But  Watkins  thought  that  words  made 
"vivid  pictures."  "Which  is  alive  then,  the  word 
or  the  picture?"  An  audible  smile  here  relieved 
the  strain,  and  at  this  break  the  Professor  took 
advantage  of  the  moment  and  told  us  what 
Trench  meant  by  "living  powers."  His  few 
words  went  deep  into  the  faculty  of  human 
speech,  but  were  so  strong  and  clear  and  true 
that  I  venture  to  say  that  no  member  of  that  class 
has  forgotten  them. 

"  'Like  the  dropping  of  scales  from  his  eyes,' 
what  is  the  allusion,  Mr.  Young?"  Young  arose, 
but  at  once  took  his  seat  again.  Springer,  a 
ministerial  student,  here  made  a  "rush,"  telling 


108      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

us  about  Saul  of  Tarsus  and  his  experience  at 
Damascus.  The  whole  substance  of  the  story 
was  drawn  out.  Another  hint  about  reading, 
viz,  in  reading  a  little  book  like  Trench  one  may 
have  to  dip  into  a  hundred  other  books. 

"  'Like  the  acquiring  of  another  sense,'  what 
does  that  mean,  Mr.  Barber?"  "A  sense  in  addi- 
tion to  those  we  have."  "How  many  have 
we?"  And  Barber  could  tell,  and  could  name  our 
five  senses,  another  "rush"  by  the  way.  "What 
other  sense  might  we  have,  Mr.  King?"  King 
is  in  doubt  about  it  and  prefers  to  sit  down.  So 
with  Bryan  and  Swartz  and  Glover.  Then,  when 
we  were  all  straining  our  thought,  peering  into 
vacancy  for  a  new  sense,  came  again  a  few  keen, 
clear  and  strong  words  from  the  Professor,  mak- 
ing us  aware  of  the  limitations  of  our  senses,  and 
of  directions  in  which  it  is  at  least  conceivable 
that  we  might  have  a  larger  access  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  things.  In  our  preparation  of  the  next 
lesson  there  was,  you  may  be  sure,  a  notable 
improvement  in  our  method  of  reading.  Pro- 
fessor March  never  lectured  to  us.  He  talked  to 
us  frequently  in  this  way,  always  catching  the 
psychological  moment  of  keenest  interest,  when 
thought  was  alert,  and  all  the  avenues  of  intelli- 
gence clear  and  open ;  then  he  would  drop  in  these 
nuggets  of  truth,  these  judgments  of  wisdom, 
like  germs  in  their  possibilities  of  rapid  growth. 
A  thousand  grateful  tributes  for  these  quiet 
talks  rise  from  the  hearts  of  his  students.  He 


PROFESSOR  MARCH  109 

found  his  way  so  easily  to  the  deepest  facts  of 
science,  and  with  equal  ease  and  impressive  unc- 
tion to  the  deepest  principles  of  life,  down  to  the 
substance  and  value  of  knowledge  of  training  and 
of  culture. 

We  talk  much  and  hear  more  of  the  "practical" 
in  education,  of  the  "utilities"  in  courses  of 
training;  but  I  want  to  say  that  I  have  never 
known  a  man  who  had  a  truer  and  a  firmer  grip 
on  the  practical  values  in  education,  or  a  finer 
touch  of  finger  on  the  pulse  of  our  human  life  in 
its  vital  needs  and  issues,  than  the  man  who  in 
1868,  at  Amherst  college,  delivered  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  address  on  "The  Scholar  of  To-day." 

That  was  Professor  Francis  A.  March. 

In  that  address,  without  knowing  it  very  likely, 
and  certainly  without  intending  it,  he  drew  his 
own  portrait.  Of  course  he  couldn't  but  do  so, 
for  it  was  his  ideal  scholar,  and  toward  that  ideal, 
in  his  own  life  and  labors  he  steadily  advanced 
for  the  next  forty  years. 

He  was  a  man  of  fine  ideals.  None  held  more 
firmly  than  he  to  the  ideal  of  loyal  service  to 
humanity.  While  he  was  reading  a  strong  pas- 
sage on  this  very  subject  from  Emerson  we  have 
often,  in  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  noted  that  his  lip 
would  quiver,  his  voice  falter,  his  eyes  moisten, 
and  his  hands  so  tremble  that  he  could  hardly 
hold  the  book;  and  the  emotion  of  the  reader 
touched  us  even  more  than  the  thought  of  the 
writer. 


110      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

A  modest  man,  modest  but  strong,  with  a  large 
and  worthy  estimate  of  his  office,  and  a  solid  re- 
alization of  the  sacred  character  and  value  of 
such  a  work  as  his — a  work  great  in  itself  and 
great  in  the  spirit  and  purpose  with  which  it  is 
done ;  and  when  we  come  to  reflect  that  our  char- 
acter is  the  result  of  the  methods  we  employ,  and 
the  spirit  that  animates  us  in  doing  our  work,  we 
see  what  a  fund  of  loyalty  and  power  such  a  man 
gathers  to  himself,  what  a  grasp  of  things  that 
are  best,  what  a  measure  of  faith  and  of  that 
divine  patience  which  is  the  supreme  solvent  of 
life's  problems. 


XI 

INDELICACY  IN  LITERATURE 

Bringing  out  new  and  attractive  editions  of 
certain  alleged  "classics"  of  English  literature 
raises  anew  the  question  as  to  what  books  are  fit 
for  popular  reading,  and  what  ones  should  be  put 
out  of  reach  on  the  reserve  shelves  of  public 
libraries  and  never  looked  at.  The  moralists  who 
take  the  law  in  their  hands  as  against  the  money- 
making  book-sellers  have  a  summary  way  of  set- 
tling the  question ;  but  the  trouble  with  this 
method  is  that  a  good  many  of  those  who  look 
on  while  the  battle  rages,  feel  a  kind  of  sneaking 
desire  to  know  how  bad,  after  all,  these  books  are. 
Pruriency  is  not  checked  but  rather  excited  and 
guided  into  specific  channels  and  they  devise  ways 
of  getting  hold  of  books  secretly  which  they  can- 
not get  openly. 

Of  course,  indecency,  which  is  nothing  but  sheer 
indecency,  has  no  claim  to  toleration;  but  if  a 
book  is  classical,  if  it  has  a  certain  fame  on  its 
literary  merits,  that  fact  reconciles  the  literary 
classes  to  its  more  objectionable  features.  It 
is  as  if  we  should  say,  "we  will  not  allow  men  to 

circulate    vile     chromos     of    nude     figures,    but 
ill 


HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

Titian's  'Venus'  is  quite  another  thing."  Mar- 
lowe's dissolute  character  finds  abundant  expres- 
sion in  his  plays,  but  there  is  a  kind  of  rude  great- 
ness in  him ;  and  he  stands  in  such  a  relation  to 
the  rise  of  the  modern  drama  that  his  writings, 
the  critics  say,  are  entitled  to  a  place  among  our 
books. 

Those  whose  ideas  of  literary  propriety  are 
formed  upon  our  current  reading,  who  find  de- 
light in  the  clean  pages  of  Dickens,  Howells  and 
Longfellow  can  form  no  adequate  idea  of  the 
grossness  of  much  of  our  earlier  literature.  Men 
and  women  seem  to  have  delighted  to  hear  all  the 
incidents,  drolleries,  intrigues  and  vices  of  hu- 
man life  plainly  spoken  of.  In  the  times  of  Rich- 
ard II  and  Henry  IV  all  England  was  reading 
or  hearing  the  "Decameron"  and  laughing  at  its 
situations.  In  fact,  as  a  nation,  we  were  then 
following  the  fashions  of  Italy,  as  York  says  in 
the  play: — 

"Report  of  fashion  in  proud  Italy, 
Whose  manners  still  our  tardy,  apish  nation, 
Limps  after  in  base  imitation." 

And  no  courts  of  Europe  were  more  luxurious 
or  more  licentious  then,  than  those  of  Italy,  es- 
pecially that  at  Milan.  Among  other  fashions 
this  one  of  writing  and  reading  bad  books  came 
in: — 

"Lascivious  meters  to  whose  venom  sound 
The  open  ear  of  youth  doth  always  listen." 


INDELICACY  IN  LITERATURE      113 

When  an  Englishman  takes  on  Italian  manners 
the  result  is  something  phenomenal;  at  least  the 
Italians  think  so,  for  they  have  a  saying :  "Inglese 
Italianto  e  un  diabolo  incarnato."  Perhaps  a 
similar  opinion  came  to  prevail  even  in  England; 
at  least  they  could  not  fail  to  see  that  the  travel- 
ers were  bringing  home  foreign  vices  with  them; 
and  Ascham  distinctly  condemns  the  practice  of 
sending  young  men  to  Italy  for  education,  unless 
good  monitors  went  with  them. 

Was  Byron  then  an  Italianized  Englishman? 
Surely  Chaucer  was  not.  He  loved  the  southern 
poets,  and  entered  with  delight  into  their  airy, 
joyous  moods,  got  inspiration  and  material  from 
them,  but  to  the  last  and  more  and  more  he  re- 
mained in  seriousness  and  sturdy  sense  an  Eng- 
lishman to  the  backbone.  In  point  of  delicacy 
and  moral  tone  as  well  as  grace,  he  is  a  vast  im- 
provement upon  Boccaccio,  yet  the  "Canterbury 
Tales"  reproduce  for  us  only  too  faithfully  the 
manners  of  a  coarse  and  sensuous  age. 

The  books  that  best  illustrate  this  trait  of  our 
literature  are  not  much  read  now.  Some  of  them 
have  fallen  into  deserved  oblivion,  others  are  un- 
der the  ban  of  a  criticism  inspired  by  a  higher 
moral  sentiment,  and  still  others  are  practically 
sealed  books  except  to  scholars,  being  unintelli- 
gible by  reason  of  the  antiquated  style  and  dic- 
tion. As  for  Shakespeare,  he  is  above  criticism 
on  any  ground  that  makes  this  or  that  trait  the 
fashion.  We  read  him  without  scruple  in  private, 


114      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

and  on  public  occasions  simply  skip  the  coarse 
passages  or  tone  them  down  to  our  more  refined 
standards  of  taste. 

Shakespeare,  however,  is  among  the  best  of  his 
time  in  this  respect.  Even  Spenser,  who  brought 
his  rich  imagination  to  the  treatment  of  sacred 
themes,  and  whose  life  and  nature  were  singularly 
pure,  must  be  expurgated  for  modern  readers.  It 
is  in  the  dramatists,  however,  that  indelicacy 
reaches  its  highest  point.  Greene,  Marlowe, 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Decker,  Webster  and 
Massinger,  vigorous,  free  and  fierce,  ready  at 
any  point  to  leap  into  extravagance  of  profanity 
or  passion.  Indeed  if  the  actors  would  "tear  a 
passion  to  tatters  to  split  the  ears  of  the  ground- 
lings," the  play-writers  gave  them  plenty  of  pas- 
sion to  tear.  Every  scene  has  a  murder  or  some 
bloodcurdling  atrocity. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  there  was  much  unclean- 
ness,  not  only  in  language  but  in  action.  The 
pageants  too  included  obscene  exhibitions.  Those 
who  heard  the  plays  and  saw  the  festive  proces- 
sions and  read  the  books  of  Queen  Elizabeth's 
time,  heard  utterances  and  saw  scenes  but  little 
better  in  point  of  purity  than  those  of  which  we 
get  glimpses  in  the  pages  of  Juvenal. 

The  Puritans  put  a  stop  to  this,  but  there 
came  another  reaction  with  the  Restoration  and 
the  turbid  stream  came  to  the  surface  again  in 
Wycherly,  Congreve  and  Farquhar.  These  and 
other  such  corrupters  of  literature  and  the  stage 


INDELICACY  IN  LITERATURE      115 

did  not  go  unrebuked.  Jeremy  Collier  notably 
made  a  vigorous  and  heroic  attack  upon  them  in 
a  treatise  on  the  Profaneness  and  Immorality  of 
the  stage,  the  effect  of  which  was  to  almost  revo- 
lutionize public  sentiment.  The  best  rebuke,  how- 
ever, has  been  the  silent  verdict  of  time  and  ad- 
vancing morals.  Indecent  works  have  dropped 
quietly  out  of  thought  and  knowledge  and  only 
the  pure  survives. 

There  has  been  a  sure  movement  through  the 
centuries  from  grossness  toward  refinement. 
Women  have  become  not  only  readers  but  writers 
and  actresses.  Books  are  made  for  them  and  by 
them.  The  true  spirit  of  chivalry,  a  growing 
regard  for  and  delicacy  toward  woman  prompts 
a  fitting  response  to  her  presence  in  literary  life 
and  enables  her  to  impress  her  own  virtues  upon 
language  and  thought  as  well  as  upon  society. 

There  are  two  phases  of  our  present  condition 
in  this  respect  which  claim  notice.  One  is  this 
fact  of  a  substantial  progress  as  compared  with 
the  past,  in  the  direction  of  pure  thinking,  pure 
living  and  pure  speech.  The  popular  taste  will 
not  bear  with  the  treatment  of  gross  subjects, 
nor  gross  language  in  the  treatment  of  any  sub- 
ject, and  there  can  be  no  question  but  that  in  this 
we  have  made  a  great  gain  for  the  cause  of  mor- 
ality. 

The  other  point  is  the  tendency  to  erect  con- 
ventional standards  in  language,  so  that  we  have 
more  regard  for  the  phrase  than  for  the  thing. 


116      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

It  leads  to  a  species  of  euphemism  which  can 
hardly  be  called  a  gain.  It  is  often  merely  the 
word  that  is  objectionable,  not  the  thought,  for 
that  we  try  to  express  by  another  word  which, 
while  it  has  not  this  meaning  may  by  some  easy 
turn  of  the  mind  be  made  to  convey  it. 

Our  language  in  its  history  shows  a  consider- 
able drift  of  meanings  as  a  result  of  this  habit. 
The  word  "lewd"  once  meant  no  more  than  un- 
learned. "Vulgar,"  "lust,"  "paramour,"  "mis- 
tress," etc.,  have  a  history  of  the  same  kind;  so 
also  that  whole  group  enumerated  by  Trench, 
which  he  says :  "Men  have  dragged  downward 
with  themselves  and  make  more  or  less  partakers 
of  their  own  fall." 

We  see  in  these  the  record  of  the  tendency  to  be 
scrupulous  in  the  choice  of  phrases,  they  having 
been  used  at  first  by  a  kind  of  euphemism  to  con- 
vey grosser  ideas  without  offense,  then  gradually 
appropriated  to  such  uses. 

This  fashionable  delicacy  runs  out  to  absurd 
extremes.  Common  words  come  to  be  shunned 
for  their  very  commonness.  We  must  call  a 
"spade"  by  some  more  elegant  name,  and  in  this 
way  a  good  many  every-day  home  words  that 
contribute  so  much  to  the  vigor  and  expressive- 
ness of  our  language  are  passing  out  of  polite 
use  with  a  positive  loss  to  speech.  Max  O'Rell 
in  his  good-natured  satire  remarks,  that  Eng- 
lish women  are  much  more  easily  shocked  by  the 
name  of  a  thing  than  by  the  thing  itself,  and 


INDELICACY  IN  LITERATURE      117 

characterizes  the  English  tongue  as  "euphemis- 
tic," a  language  that  uses  undecided  words  and 
"always  beats  about  the  bush."  I  have  no  doubt 
that  in  many  drawing-rooms,  where  these  notions 
of  delicacy  prevail,  to  say  "a  meal  of  victuals" 
would  be  enough  to  put  upon  one  the  stamp  of 
vulgarity. 

It  is  possible  too  that  this  fastidiousness  may 
extend  far  enough  to  affect  the  makers  of  litera- 
ture, and  thus  set  narrower  limits  to  art,  and 
even  put  genius  under  some  restraint.  In  the  ex- 
ercise of  creative  power,  men  need  to  be  unfettered. 
All  that  is  true  must  be  open  before  them  for 
their  use.  Humors,  levities,  even  vices  and  sins 
as  well  as  the  higher  and  better  features  of  life 
and  character  find  a  legitimate  place  in  the  best 
forms  of  art. 

The  aim  and  effect  may  still  be  to  elevate  and 
purify;  in  fact  if  the  truthful  working  up  of 
the  materials  of  nature  into  forms  of  beauty  ever 
fails  to  have  that  effect,  it  is  not  because  there 
are  vicious  characters  and  gross  allusions,  but 
because  we  stop  at  these,  take  them  out  of  their 
relations  and  fail  to  see  the  work  in  its  unity. 
"It  is  coarse  in  the  subject-matter,"  says  the  Et- 
trick  Shepherd  of  Pope's  "Abelard  and  Eloise," 
"but,  0,  sirs!  powerfu'  and  pathetic  in  execu- 
tion ;"  and  the  power  is  for  good,  and  the  pathos 
the  genuine  stirring  of  wholesome  feeling. 

If  the  writer's  fidelity  to  his  subject  is  over- 
ruled by  the  dictation  of  material  or  form  on  the 


118      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

part  of  his  readers,  there  must  be  distortion  some- 
where, some  affectation,  some  reserve,  some  cov- 
ering up  of  a  forbidden  element  at  which,  per- 
haps neither  the  moral  instinct  nor  the  instinct 
of  art  would  take  offense.  Chaucer's  "Miller"  is 
a  "cherl,"  but  he  is  in  the  Canterbury  party  and 
must  tell  his  tale,  and  that  is  the  poet's  apology. 

"I  pray, 

For  Goddes  loves  as  deem  not  that  I  say 
Of  evil  intent,  but  that  I  mote  reherse 
Hir  tales  alia,  al  be  they  better  or  werse, 
Or  elles  falsen  som  of  my  matire." 

lago  is  not  too  great  a  villain  for  the  part  he 
plays,  but  his  villainy  would  not  be  half  as  vil- 
lainous if  the  core  of  it  were  not  distrust  of  the 
virtue  of  women.  Woman's  fortress  is  her  virtue ; 
man's  is  faith  in  her  virtue ;  but  lago  has  no  faith, 
he  is  dismantled,  a  loathsome  wreck  of  manhood. 
The  character  would  be  but  imperfectly  drawn 
if  this  feature  were  not  shown  us,  as  it  is,  by  his 
coarse  speeches.  He  makes  capital  of  his  real 
character,  and  flings  out  his  gross  thoughts  with 
a  rudeness  that  sickens  the  sensitive  Moor.  And 
thus  he  plays  his  part. 

Hamlet's  rude  talk  to  the  sweet  Ophelia  may 
be  looked  upon  as  a  part  of  the  unsolved  prob- 
lem, which  that  great  character  presents,  though 
most  would  be  free  to  say  that  Shakespeare  had 
better  have  omitted  that  part.  Queen  Elizabeth 
would  see  Falstaff  in  love,  a  passion  of  which  this 


INDELICACY  IN  LITERATURE      119 

"huge  hill  of  flesh"  was  utterly  incapable,  that 
is,  in  any  true  and  honorable  sense  of  the  word ; 
so  the  poet  does  the  best  he  can  in  the  "Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor." 

The  thought  arises  then,  that  so  far  as  a  truly 
refined  taste  and  a  sense  of  real  moral  distinc- 
tions are  the  basis  of  our  standards,  there  is  no 
restraint  upon  genius  nor  any  danger  to  morals ; 
but  so  far  as  our  ideas  are  conventional,  mere 
matters  of  fashion  and  affectation,  the  mincing 
proprieties  of  the  parlor  without  the  soul  of  moral 
sense,  there  may  be  both  a  restraint  upon  creative 
power  and  great  danger  to  morals. 

The  character  of  much  of  our  late  popular 
literature  goes  to  show  that  we  are  too  easily 
satisfied  with  the  form  of  decorous  language,  for- 
getting that  a  gross  thought  may  lurk  in  a  decent 
phrase.  It  is  here  as  in  our  spiritual  conflicts — 
the  devil  may  clothe  himself  as  an  angel  of  light. 

The  most  dangerous  representation  of  impurity 
and  vice  is  not  where  it  stands  out  in  the  clear 
light,  but  where  it  comes  almost  to  the  surface, 
and  is  veiled  with  elegance  of  phrase  just  thick 
enough  to  hide  all  its  deformity.  The  suggestion 
gives  play  to  the  imagination  which,  in  the  young 
especially,  is  only  too  ready  to  take  fire  and  dart 
out  to  the  very  extreme  in  the  direction  of  im- 
purity. 

Much  depends  upon  the  writer's  power.  He 
may  raise  us  to  higher  regions  of  thought  and 
experience  and  rouse  feelings  such  that  any  low 


120      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

suggestion  would  be  impertinent  if  not  impossible. 
King  Lear  can  start  no  commonplace  associa- 
tions. 

Much  too  may  depend  upon  the  writer's  man- 
ner and  motive,  upon  whether  or  not  he  writes 
with  a  conscience. 

One  feels  no  protection  from  the  author's  con- 
science in  reading  Dryden,  or  Swift,  or  Byron. 
"If  you  find  anything  bad  here,  make  the  most 
of  it,"  is  what  we  seem  to  read  between  the  lines. 
Sterne  will  sacrifice  dignity  and  decency  alike,  to 
raise  a  roar  of  laughter.  He  must  move  you,  if 
in  no  other  way  he  will  mount  the  pulpit  and  in- 
stead of  saying  "let  us  pray,"  will  toss  his  peri- 
wig at  your  head.  We  pass  along  from  chapter 
to  chapter  in  "Tristram  Shandy"  with  a  feeling 
not  unlike  that  with  which  we  watch  the  antics 
of  a  monkey.  "What  queer  thing  will  he  do 
next?" 

How  different  was  Goldsmith!  There  is  mat- 
ter in  the  "Vicar  of  Wakefield"  that  we  should 
say  must  be  handled  with  great  delicacy,  yet  we 
see  no  trace  of  effort.  With  perfect  frankness, 
ease,  and  purity  the  whole  story  is  told.  George 
McDonald  and  George  Eliot  have  equal  frank- 
ness and  delicacy  if  not  the  same  quaint  sim- 
plicity. Becky  Sharp  is  a  fallen  woman  if  ever 
there  was  one,  yet  there  is  no  passage  in  "Vanity 
Fair"  to  which  the  most  innocent  and  impressible 
nature  may  not  turn  without  the  least  fear  of 
contamination, 


INDELICACY  IN  LITERATURE 

To  see  vice  and  coarseness  cannot  harm  one 
morally  if  he  is  made  to  turn  from  it  with  a 
shudder  of  disgust ;  but  to  dress  impurity  up  and 
make  it  seem  attractive,  to  lead  you  almost  up 
to  it  and  make  you  wish  to  go  further,  as  so  many 
of  the  novelists  do,  is  indeed  to  endanger  morals. 
We  should  wisely  discriminate  and  give  no  li- 
cense to 

"That  soft  persuasive  art 
That  can  without  the  least  offense  impart 
The  loosest  wishes  to  the  chastest  heart." 


XII 

BOOKS  TO  BE  READ  BEFORE 
GRADUATION 

Anyone  who  goes  far  enough  to  make  serious 
inquiry  about  what  books  to  read  is  not  likely 
to  go  astray  for  want  of  advice  on  that  score ; 
for  there  is  substantial  agreement  about  a  few 
great  books,  and  the  recognition  of  their  excel- 
lence is  widespread.  At  this  stage  of  the  inquiry 
it  seems  to  me  somewhat  more  important  to  touch 
upon  matters  connected  with  the  purpose  and 
method  of  reading. 

It  would  be  a  gain  if  students  could  earlier 
learn  to  regard  the  great  books  about  which 
much  college  works  centers,  as  other  than  mere 
school  books, — Milton,  Bacon,  Spenser,  Goethe, 
Lessing,  Moliere,  Homer,  Plato,  Xenophon, 
Cicero,  Horace,  Tacitus.  That  change  comes 
sooner  or  later  to  anyone  who  is  to  receive  much 
benefit  or  pleasure  from  the  best  literature,  and 
so  I  am  in  the  habit  of  asking  the  boys  not  to 
sell  their  college  books,  and  to  dust  them  occa- 
sionally even  after  graduation.  It  is  rather 
strange  that  such  advice  should  be  necessary,  but 
it  has  been,  and  to  some  slight  degree  is  even 


BOOKS  TO  BE  READ  123 

yet.  It  seems  like  sacrilege  to  dicker  away  one's 
college  Homer  or  Horace  for  a  paltry  half-dollar. 

That  is  a  great  day  in  a  student's  experience, 
when  some  passage — perhaps  a  single  line — from 
one  of  the  old  poets,  or  some  glowing  period  from 
the  old  orators  or  historians,  lifts  him  suddenly 
to  the  realization  that  these  college  task  books 
are  the  sources  of  a  mighty  inspiration. 

So  I  would  say  learn  to  read  the  books  of  the 
curriculum,  so  far  as  they  are  books  to  be  read, 
and  cultivate  a  preference  for  one  or  another  as 
it  may  make  a  special  appeal  to  you  by  its  form, 
its  thought,  or  its  suggestions,  thus  laying  the 
foundation  for  a  more  thorough  study  of  it  as  a 
part  of  your  life  habit. 

Such  a  hold  upon  a  single  book  often  proves 
to  be  an  ample  intellectual  resource.  It  is  not 
quantity  but  quality  that  tells  in  education. 
"Read  much  but  not  many  works,"  says  Sir  Wil- 
liam Hamilton.  If  the  object  is  to  specialize 
and  get  together  knowledge  about  any  particular 
subject, — that  requires  reading  of  another  kind, 
and  must  be  spoken  of  separately.  That  pre- 
supposes general  culture,  or  the  two  processes 
may  well  go  on  together ;  but  in  general,  broad 
knowledge  is  not  promoted  by  wide  reading,  but 
by  close  and  studious  reading;  and  for  this  pur- 
pose ten  books  would  be  better  than  a  hundred, 
and  possibly  I  may  say  that  three  would  be  bet- 
ter than  ten. 

It  may  be  well  to  make  a  note  here  of  what 


124      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

we  mean  by  reading.  Much  of  our  talk  about 
it  sounds  as  though  it  were  a  simple  and  rapid 
process,  and  that  reading  a  book  were  to  go 
through  it  in  this  way,  glancing  over  its  sen- 
tences once  for  all.  With  many  books  that  is 
true ;  but  with  those  here  considered  the  method 
should  be  very  different.  Comprehension  is  the 
point,  and  these  great  books  are  not  mastered 
at  a  glance.  Their  truths  are  too  large  to  be 
conveyed  immediately  from  the  page  to  the  mind, 
or  even  from  one  mind  to  another  by  speech.  We 
find  constantly  that  readers  go  over  passages 
without  getting  more  than  a  glint  of  the  thought, 
sometimes  not  even  that.  We  get  on  by  train- 
ing, so  as  to  read  better;  but  ordinarily  we  come 
up  to  great  truth  slowly — by  leaps  now  and  then, 
it  may  be,  but  creeping  for  the  most  part — to- 
ward it  at  first,  then  nearer  and  nearer  by  repeti- 
tion until  we  get  to  it, — that  is  apprehension; 
then,  if  we  are  capable  and  keep  on,  we  get  around 
it  and  above,  seeing  it  from  many  sides, — that 
is  more  like  comprehension. 

Great  books  must  therefore  be  carefully  read, 
read  time  and  again,  if  what  is  in  them  is  really 
to  be  transferred  to  the  mind  and  there  be 
wrought  out  into  ideal  shapes.  That  is  what 
makes  them  educational.  This  gradual  catch- 
ing of  great  meanings  is  a  wonderful  developer 
of  intellectual  power.  It  feeds,  too,  as  well  as 
exercises. 

Speaking  of  working  out  the  materials  of  lit- 


BOOKS  TO  BE  READ  125 

erature  into  ideal  shapes  brings  up  in  another 
way  the  suggestion  that  mere  reading  is  not 
enough.  If  one  tells  us  he  has  read  Emerson's 
essays  on  "Manners"  and  "Civilization,"  it  may 
mean  much  or  it  may  mean  little.  The  impli- 
cation would,  however,  naturally  be  that  he  had 
read  them  and  therefore  knew  what  was  in  them. 
Even  supposing  that  to  be  true,  knowledge  is  not 
all.  Such  reading  is  for  discipline  and  discipline 
in  its  results  is  partly  knowledge,  partly  readi- 
ness of  thought  and  judgment,  partly  the  ca- 
pacity for  noble  action.  Here  is  where  reading 
touches  or  should  touch  that  inner  fiber  which 
we  call  character.  We  do  not  read  a  book  merely 
to  know  what  is  in  it,  or  even  to  be  able  to  tell 
what  is  in  it,  but  also  to  construct  for  ourselves 
ideals  which  shall  be  guides  in  our  thinking  and 
living. 

Another  point  of  great  importance  is  that  we 
should  learn  to  take  in  a  writer's  truth  just  as 
he  means  it — undistorted.  The  power  to  do  that 
makes  a  very  good  measure  of  one's  capacity  to 
receive  the  highest  benefit  from  education.  In 
this  we  find  great  differences.  Some  men  are  so 
intensely  preoccupied  that  it  seems  impossible  to 
displace  their  own  thoughts,  and  books  in  conse- 
quence make  little  impression  upon  them.  We 
read  our  own  ideas  into  the  pages  before  us. 

I  know  a  man  who  has  been  a  close  and  careful 
student  for  forty  years.  He  has  a  hobby,  how- 
ever, and  is  perhaps  what  we  should  call  a 


126      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

"crank."  At  any  rate  he  deliberately  reads  his 
own  pet  theories  into  every  text  he  opens.  That 
is  an  extreme  case,  but  we  are  all  tainted  with 
that  malady.  We  close  our  minds  to  any  but 
our  own  truth.  That  we  recognize  with  some  fi- 
delity, but  all  the  rest  we  either  ignore,  or  give 
it  some  sort  of  relevancy  to  our  sphere  of  inter- 
ests by  distortion. 

A  clear  eye  and  an  alert  and  unbiased  mind — 
that's  what  we  want  in  reading.  As  Lucretius 
says  to  Memmius,  apply  to  true  philosophy  ears 
disengaged  (vacuas  auris),  a  mind  keenly  alert 
(animumque  sagacem),  and  free  from  cares 
(semotum  a  curis). 

I  am  not  speaking  now  specifically  of  preju- 
dice, though  it  is  very  important  to  be  free  from 
that, — to  read  both  sides  and  all  sides  with  even 
candor,  and  to  give  hospitable  welcome  to  facts 
and  opinions  that  are  not  like  our  own.  I  am 
speaking  rather  of  preoccupation,  and  that 
inherent  human  weakness  of  ours,  narrowness 
of  interest.  Such  narrowness  limits  the  field 
upon  which  our  powers  of  mind  have  vivid 
play. 

Here  we  are  again,  right  on  ground  where 
moral  and  intellectual  culture  go  hand  in  hand; 
for  this  narrowness  is  essentially  immoral.  It 
results  from  the  supremacy  of  self,  and  interest 
in  the  things  that  appeal  to  self. 

Take  memory  for  example.  It  is  one  of  the 
powers  of  the  intellect,  as  we  say,  and  yet  moral 


BOOKS  TO  BE  READ  127 

traits  very  largely  determine  its  qualities, — not 
so  much  in  its  retentive  power,  but  in  the  kind 
of  things  remembered.  Everyone  has  a  memory 
good  for  some  things, — events,  dates,  forms, 
persons,  places,  words,  thoughts,  principles,  in 
general;  or  these  and  many  trivial  matters  as 
they  may  come  home  to  self, — his  own  plans, 
conquests,  doings,  grievances, — how  long  some 
people  can  remember  a  grudge! — hardships, 
slights,  mistakes,  what  is  due  him,  or  what  has 
been  paid  him  that  was  not  due.  There  is  in 
most  of  us  an  overweening  self  which  becomes 
unconsciously  the  center  of  a  little  circle,  and 
whatever  comes  within  that  circle  is  eagerly 
caught  up  and  tenaciously  held. 

Now  in  education  and  in  that  self-culture  here 
considered,  the  point  is  to  open  the  mind,  and 
to  impart  to  things  worth  remembering  the  same, 
or  an  equal  interest  with  these  trivial  belong- 
ings. In  many  cases  this  is  a  difficult  task. 
Selfishness  is  multiform,  and  so  subtle  in  many 
of  its  forms,  that  while  it  may  not  appear,  it  will 
yet  be  working  to  make  our  minds  impervious 
and  prevent  any  enlargement  of  the  range  of 
interests.  Many  a  learner  brightens  up  with  an 
interest  apparently  genuine,  but  which  turns  out 
to  be  another  head  of  the  hydra.  The  fact  ap- 
pealed in  some  way  to  the  old  love,  and  the  pupil 
had  not  really  been  born  again.  Regeneration, 
intellectual  as  well  as  spiritual,  is  the  dethrone- 
ment of  self. 


128      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

Let  me  here  quote  a  few  words  from  Dr.  Chan- 
ning  to  the  same  effect: 

"A  man  who  rises  above  himself  looks  from  an  emi- 
nence on  nature  and  providence,  on  society  and  life. 
Thought  expands,  as  by  a  natural  elasticity,  when  the 
pressure  of  selfishness  is  removed.  The  moral  and 
religious  principles  of  the  soul  generously  cultivated, 
fertilize  the  intellect.  Duty  faithfully  performed 
opens  the  mind  to  truth,  both  being  of  one  family, 
alike  immutable,  universal  and  everlasting." 

By  the  way,  that  I  may  not  close  without 
recommending  a  single  book  outside  the  curric- 
ulum, let  me  suggest  the  works  of  William  El- 
lery  Channing  as  a  book  that  every  student  should 
read. 


XIII 
COLLEGE  FRATERNITIES 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  college  fraternities 
had  their  origin  in  a  period  of  intense  hostility 
to  all  secret  societies.  That  hostility  grew  out 
of  the  anti-Masonic  crusade,  which  followed  the  ab- 
duction of  William  Morgan  in  1826.  During  the 
next  few  years  these  Greek  letter  societies  sprung 
up  rapidly  in  our  eastern  institutions.  They  were 
forbidden.  Colleges  expelled  the  members  of 
them  when  known ;  they  lived,  however,  and  throve 
in  spite  of  persecution,  perhaps  partly  by  reason 
of  it.  They  grew  in  concealment.  Students 
promised  not  to  join  them,  but  they  did  join 
them.  They  wore  badges,  but  in  public  the 
badges  were  pinned  inside  the  vest  pocket.  They 
juggled,  doubtless,  with  questions  of  conscience 
and  duty.  They  resorted  to  casuistries  and  quib- 
bles, which  now,  when  recalled,  seem  like  pleasant 
jests,  but  then,  no  doubt,  served  a  serious  pur- 
pose. 

I  find  in  our  own  records  some  evidences  of 
this  antagonism,  the  main  foe  being  the  faculty. 
"Not  even  the  ban  of  that  learned  body,"  says 

the  historian  at  one  point,   "or  the  hostility  of 
129 


130      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

people  at  large  was  able  to  prevent  the  further- 
ance of  real  good." 

The  element  of  secrecy  seemed  to  be  the  main 
objection,  as  though  secrecy  were  in  itslf  bad 
and  sure  to  be  a  cloak  for  bad  conduct. 

It  would  seem  absurd  to  suppose  that  any 
group  of  average  young  fellows,  not  to  say  chosen 
fellows,  would  deliberately  combine  and  make  a 
secret  bond  to  promote  immoral  ends.  We  must 
think  better  of  our  brothers,  and  if  possible,  bet- 
ter of  our  kind.  Not  every  secret  imagination 
even,  is  an  unclean  one.  Not  every  hidden  pur- 
pose of  the  individual  heart  is  sinister  or  selfish. 
Men  have  good  thoughts  and  good  purposes  as 
well. 

We  shall  deal  more  fairly  with  the  fact  of  se- 
crecy if  we  remember  the  innocent  fondness  of 
youth  for  mystery ;  and  also  the  fact  that  at  any 
time  of  life  there  are  certain  hopes  and  ideals 
that  are  so  intensely  personal,  so  a  part  of  the  life 
within  that  we  guard  them  with  instinctive  deli- 
cacy. 

There  may  have  been  other  objections  to  fra- 
ternities ;  indeed,  some  faint  echoes  of  other  ob- 
jections may  still  be  heard,  as  that  they  foster 
a  spirit  of  exclusiveness,  that  they  break  up  the 
natural  bonds  of  fellowship  between  students  of 
the  same  institution  or  the  same  class. 

We  do  not  find  it  so  at  Lafayette.  The  men 
of  these  brotherhoods  have  free  and  friendly  in- 
tercourse, and  men  who  do  not  belong  to  any 


COLLEGE  FRATERNITIES          131 

fraternity  mingle  in  cordial  relations  with  the 
men  of  all  fraternities.  Social  life  on  the  campus 
seems  now,  in  this  respect,  very  much  what  it  was 
in  my  own  college  days.  It  was  no  uncommon 
thing  for  our  brothers  to  have  among  their  close 
friends  men  of  other  fraternities  and  men  of  no 
fraternity. 

In  the  period  following  the  Civil  War  there 
was  a  change  of  attitude  toward  these  Greek- 
letter  societies — from  hostility  to  tolerance,  from 
tolerance  to  open  recognition,  from  recognition 
to  high  favor — until  during  these  last  few  years 
they  have  become  one  of  the  most  important  fac- 
tors of  our  college  life,  contributing  in  the  most 
natural  and  easy  way  to  the  solution  of  very 
difficult  problems, — the  dormitory  problem  for 
one.  You  may  see  it  here  upon  the  campus — 
students  comfortably  and  cozily  lodged  in  chap- 
ter houses.  The  problem  of  college  government ; 
the  problem  of  maintaining  the  spirit  of  faith- 
ful and  honest  work;  and  more  important  still, 
the  problem  of  personal  influence  upon  individuals, 
known  to  be  the  best  element  of  our  education. 

The  professors  used  to  hold  that  key,  but  they 
have  lost  it,  especially  in  our  larger  colleges  and 
universities,  by  the  overwhelming  increase  of  num- 
bers and  subdivision  of  courses  of  instruction.  A 
man  may  pass  through  one  of  our  larger  col- 
leges, I  am  told,  without  acquaintance  with  pro- 
fessors, without  any  of  that  vital  personal  touch 
with  the  best  men  of  the  Faculty,  which  might  be 


132      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

to    them    a    source    of   inspiration    and    strength. 

In  part,  this  loss  is  made  up  by  personal  con- 
tact among  students  themselves,  and  this  contact 
is  at  its  best  where  we  have  the  brotherly  and 
sympathetic  association  of  kindred  natures. 

The  fraternity  gives  also,  in  this  respect,  the 
added  advantage  of  intimate  relations  with  its 
graduate  members.  At  commencements  and  on 
great  college  occasions  they  come  back  in  the 
years  of  their  strength,  they  bring  with  them 
their  larger  experience  and  their  warm  hearts, 
to  renew  their  youth  in  the  magic  circle  of  the 
college  brotherhood.  They  get  their  warmest 
greeting  at  the  chapter  house,  and  it  is  here  that 
they  give  their  best  in  personal  touch  and  in- 
fluence. 

Not  only  so,  but  resident  alumni  are  always  at 
hand  and  keep  up  a  keen  interest  in  the  welfare 
of  their  younger  brothers.  We  have  in  this  an 
invaluable  source  of  mature  and  thoughtful  in- 
fluence, and  almost  always  exerted  to  raise  the 
mental  and  moral  tone  of  the  fraternity. 

Our  youngest  brothers  keep  themselves  con- 
scious of  the  higher  aims  of  this  organization — 
good  fellowship,  good  morals,  and  fine  personal 
qualities.  We  have  none  of  the  modern  affecta- 
tion of  contempt  for  scholarship,  for  we  are  stu- 
dents, and  we  know  that  scholarship  is  one  of  the 
noblest  fruits  of  student  life;  but  we  put  char- 
acter above  everything  else.  We  aim  to  develop 
our  younger  brothers  in  social  qualities  that  have 


COLLEGE  FRATERNITIES          133 

the  deepest  value — to  develop  them  "through  in- 
timate relations  with  a  limited  number  of  con- 
genial friends  who  are  bound  together  in  an 
organization  where  loyalty,  truth,  honor  and  fra- 
ternal affection  are  the  guiding  principles." 

I  here  draw  near  to  precious  "secrets"  with 
which  I  may  not  freely  deal  to-day,  but  the  secret 
that  gives  us  life  and  power  will  be  found  to  be 
one  common  to  all  true  and  noble  hearts. 

This  institution  has  to  be  interpreted  in  view 
of  its  fundamental  aim  to  promote  brotherly  kind- 
ness. In  that  we  do  well,  for  we  get  pretty  near 
the  enduring  foundations  in  human  relationship 
when  we  get  upon  that  rock  bottom  of  brotherly 
love. 

Remember,  these  are  the  years  of  rapid  growth 
in  character  and  of  kindling  ideals.  To  me  one 
of  the  joys  of  this  association  was  the  opportu- 
nities which  it  gave  me  for  uplift  in  directions 
suggested  by  the  character  and  the  achievements 
of  the  men  about  me. 

There  is  no  finer  experience  in  life  than  that 
keen  sense  of  strength  and  victory  which  comes 
to  a  youth  when  he  reaches  out  and  lays  hold  of 
ideals  and  presently  finds  that  he  is  by  them  lifted 
to  better  levels. 

We  do  not  forget  that  there  are  both  good 
and  bad  ideals,  and  it  is  quite  possible  that  in  our 
chapters  there  may  at  times  be  men  of  question- 
able character  and  aims,  whose  influence  might 
be  bad,  but  I  have  great  confidence  in  the  choices 


134      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

of  young  men  of  normal  vigor  and  intelligence, 
especially  when  their  choices  may  be  guided  by 
those  who  have  their  welfare  deeply  at  heart. 

I  love  to  think  of  young  men  with  faces  up- 
ward turned  to  the  rising  levels  of  life,  ready  for, 
as  they  are  capable  of,  sudden  uplifting. 

We  leap  upward — thank  God !  and  are  at  once 
at  home  in  better  surroundings.  We  creep  down- 
ward. And  even  when  we  are  lured  along  the 
descending  way  by  agreeable  self-indulgence  the 
whole  atmosphere  of  a  lower  situation  is  striking 
and  offensive  to  us,  and  we  stay  there — if  we  stay 
— reluctantly. 

That  is  our  hope,  brothers.  The  best  oratory 
is  none  too  good  for  the  meanest  of  us,  nor  the 
best  music,  nor  the  best  art,  nor  the  best  culture. 

We  are  dealing  with  that  which  has  in  it  mighty 
possibilities  of  receiving  and  responding  to  good 
influence  when  we  are  dealing  with  the  spirit  of 
youth  with  its  idealism  and  its  high  ambitions. 

Raise  a  young  man  to  better  social  conditions 
than  he  has  been  accustomed  to  and  there  will 
be  an  expansive  thrill  of  adaptation  that  will 
make  him  instantly  at  home.  Given  a  sudden 
uplift  in  culture  or  in  art,  and  the  soul  flutters 
with  the  joy  of  a  new  possession,  within  a  new 
and  congenial  environment ;  but  you  can't  go 
downward  either  in  society,  in  culture,  or  in  art, 
without  a  chill.  This  is  true  in  every  field  of  ex- 
perience where  you  have  to  do  with  the  spirits 
of  men. 


COLLEGE  FRATERNITIES  135 

I  will  maintain  optimism,  therefore,  against  all 
who  come,  basing  my  belief  upon  this  one  truth 
of  human  nature,  that  we  rise  to  a  better  life 
with  a  thrilling  sense  of  strength  and  victory; 
and  we  sink  to  a  worse  life,  stung  with  a  sense 
of  moral  defeat.  It  is  such  considerations  that 
bring  home  to  us  the  opportunities  of  good  that 
offer  within  this  sacred  circle.  If  there  are 
weak  brothers,  erring  brothers,  there  are  strong 
ones  too;  and  one  strong  man  in  a  chapter  may 
lay  his  hand — nay,  lay  his  love,  on  any  brother 
and  win  him  to  the  better  way. 

I  spoke  just  now  of  the  "sacred  circle"  and  a 
little  before  of  the  "magic  circle."  We  instinct- 
ively select  strong  words  to  express  that  which 
passes  from  life  to  life  in  such  relationship,  yet 
these  words  are  not  strong  enough.  The  old 
wonder  tales  in  their  use  of  magic,  made  proph- 
ecy that  has  been  more  than  fulfilled  before  our 
eyes.  A  little  scientific  investigation,  for  ex- 
ample, the  mastery  of  a  few  laws  of  nature  and 
their  use,  has  accomplished  results,  in  comparison 
with  which  the  genii  of  magicians  are  insignifi- 
cant. 

The  lamp  of  Aladdin,  the  rugs  of  Houssain,  and 
the  golden  apple  of  Ahmed  are  like  children's  toys 
when  compared  with  the  achievements  of  modern 
human  art  in  the  direction  of  the  rapid  creation 
of  wealth,  of  transportation,  of  the  lightning 
flight  of  intelligence,  and  the  healing  of  disease. 
And  greater  works  than  these  can  we  do  in  the 


136      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

realm  of  spirit — in  the  working  out  of  human 
lives — in  giving  power  to  the  weak  and  ambition 
to  the  dull,  in  those  transformations  of  the  ignoble 
into  the  noble,  of  rudeness  into  refinement,  of  in- 
capacity into  skill  and  readiness  and  power. 

Such  are  the  tasks  that  are  set  before  us  and 
that  should  fire  our  hearts  with  zeal  in  the  cause 
of  Tau  Kappa  Phi.  Do  I  set  the  standard  too 
high?  Well,  it  is  the  very  nature  of  an  ideal 
that  it  should  be  in  advance  of  our  actual  attain- 
ments. We  want  it  to  draw  us  onward  and  up- 
ward. This  is  not  a  social  union  only,  for  mirth, 
or  entertainment,  or  conversation,  or  festive  en- 
joyment— the  mere  intercourse  of  comrades;  it  is 
a  fellowship  of  a  high  order,  in  which  each  min- 
isters of  his  best  to  his  fellows,  each  finds  his 
pleasure  in  promoting  the  best  fruits  of  brotherly 
love. 

And  so  we  come  back  to  the  point  from  which 
we  started — brotherly  love.  We  may  well  be  re- 
minded by  that  phrase  that  our  fraternity  is 
not  an  end  in  itself,  but  is  educational,  and  there- 
fore a  means  to  a  larger  end.  We  should  make  it 
a  stepping  stone  to  that  wider  brotherhood  to 
which  we  all  belong,  and  the  realization  of  which 
we  should  all  promote — the  brotherhood  of  man. 


XIV 
TOWN  AND  GOWN 

There  are  of  course,  differences  between  col- 
lege life  and  town  life.  A  measure  of  separation 
from  the  outside  world  is  a  fact  here,  and  leads 
to  distinctions  inevitable  and  for  the  most  part 
desirable.  The  circumstances  give  college  boys 
the  advantage  in  most  respects.  The  community 
is  compact  and  isolated,  so  that  organization  and 
the  resulting  benefits  come  easily  and  naturally. 
Take  the  matter  of  recreation:  College  students 
can  make  better  music,  for  example,  than  will 
ordinarily  be  heard  among  an  equal  number  of 
young  men  in  town  life;  better  jokes;  they  have 
better  methods  of  getting  and  spending  holidays ; 
they  have  better  games,  for  the  discipline  is  more 
thorough  and  there  is  less  vulgarity  and  ill-feel- 
ing in  their  contests.  To  my  mind,  when  class 
meets  class  or  college  meets  college  on  the  ball 
field — pluck  against  pluck  and  skill  against  skill 
—  we  have  a  kind  of  ideal  field  sport. 

Then  there  are  social  differences  to  be  noted. 
Students  have  better  social  clubs,  and  the  spirit 
springing  from  class  and  college  associations  be- 
gets a  prevalent  feeling  of  good  fellowship  which 
137 


138      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

will  not  be  found  in  an  equal  degree  in  town  life. 

On  the  intellectual  side,  too,  there  are  wide  dis- 
tinctions. To  say  nothing  now  of  the  courses 
of  study  which  make  up  the  regular  business  of 
the  student,  there  is  access  to  books  and  the  pres- 
ence of  competent  helpers.  Outside  of  required 
work  students  have  good  societies  for  literary 
and  scientific  training.  Their  outside  reading, 
too,  is  more  systematic  and  judicious. 

Further,  on  the  moral  side,  still  more  impor- 
tant distinctions  appear.  College  life  presents 
the  opportunity  of  shaping  the  outlines  of  char- 
acter in  an  atmosphere  as  free  as  possible  from 
perverting  and  mercenary  influences.  Students 
as  a  rule  get  to  have  clear  convictions  based  upon 
honest  sentiments.  They  may  not  be  always 
right;  it  would  be  too  much  to  say  of  any  body 
of  men,  old  or  young,  that  they  are  always  and 
infallibly  right.  But  they  are  honest  and  candid 
in  their  convictions,  and  that  which  they  are  to 
approve  must  come  to  them  with  the  stamp  of 
sincerity  and  integrity  upon  it. 

Clear  convictions  are  not  common  enough 
among  young  men  to  make  this  a  difference  of 
slight  moment.  Mr.  By-ends,  of  Bunyan's  time, 
with  his  rich  kindred,  as  Mr.  Smooth-man,  Mr. 
Facing-both-ways  and  Mr.  Anything,  have 
spawned  a  numerous  progeny  upon  this  age,  and 
they  stand  in  the  public  walks  of  business  and 
politics,  as  well  as  in  religion,  ready  to  turn  aside, 
or  go  back  or  forward  in  the  train  of  any  master 


TOWN  AND  GOWN  139 

who  wears  silver  slippers.  It  is  a  good  thing  to 
let  young  men  form  moral  habits  under  circum- 
stances such  that  they  can  discuss  and  decide  their 
questions  under  the  light  of  the  best  sentiments 
and  the  noblest  states  of  mind. 

These  are  a  few  of  the  distinctions  which  pre- 
sent the  best  side  of  college  life  and  which  cannot 
be  outwardly  marked.  They  appear  only  when 
the  facts  are  known. 

As  to  conventional  outward  distinctions,  such, 
as  wearing  peculiar  dress,  carrying  canes  and 
the  like,  they  are  comparatively  indifferent  and 
are  questions  to  be  decided  partly  as  matters  of 
taste  and  partly  of  expense.  Oxford  hats  are 
certainly  unique  and  picturesque  and  have  a 
scholastic  air.  No  serious  objection  could  be  made 
to  the  introduction  of  such  a  fashion,  unless  it 
should  seem  undesirable  to  impose  a  new  item  of 
expense  on  the  members  of  the  class. 

Without  discussing  particular  fashions,  how- 
ever, two  general  considerations  cause  me  to  look 
with  some  regret  upon  the  introduction  of  new 
customs  which  widen  the  difference  between  the 
little  college  world  and  the  great  world  without. 
One,  that  the  effect  of  these  customs  so  often  is 
to  put  emphasis,  both  in  college  and  out,  upon 
those  features  of  college  life  which  are  not  the 
best.  The  great  public,  so  far  as  it  is  at  all  in- 
terested in  us,  will  not  come  here  and  sit  down  to 
a  careful  observation  of  our  modes  of  life  and 
work,  but  will  form  its  impressions  of  us  from 


140      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

those  traits  of  our  life  which  we  ourselves  make 
conspicuous. 

The  annual  "bowl  fight"  at  a  neighboring  Uni- 
versity does  more  in  all  probability  to  determine 
the  average  public  impression  of  university  life  in 
that  city  than  any  whole  month  of  regular  stu- 
dent work  there.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the 
annual  burnings  and  burials  of  books.  I  do  not 
say  that  impressions  thus  formed  are  correct,  but 
they  are  facts.  A  little  hazing  gives  us  a  bad 
name ;  so,  too,  a  rough  and  brutal  method  of  play- 
ing foot-ball,  or  an  exhibition  in  the  cars  or 
streets  or  other  public  places  of  conduct  more 
than  usually  eccentric  and  demonstrative.  The 
most  casual  reader  of  the  newspapers  cannot  fail 
to  see  to  what  an  extent  the  whole  system  of  lib- 
eral education  is  judged  in  certain  quarters,  not 
from  the  kind  of  men  our  colleges  turn  out,  or 
from  the  kind  of  work  students  do,  but  from  the 
impression  they  make  in  their  observance  of  gro- 
tesque traditional  customs  and  in  their  jolly  hours 
of  freedom. 

The  other  thought  is  that  with  the  increase 
of  conventional  distinctions,  there  grows  up  an 
artificial  environment  in  which  students  form  hab- 
its of  living  and  ideas  of  life  which  disqualify 
many  for  the  actual  conditions  which  the  world 
presents. 

It  is  said  of  the  English  universities  that  they 
turn  out  many  sporting  gentlemen  who  are  un- 
fitted for  the  serious  pursuits  of  the  business 


TOWN  AND  GOWN  141 

world;  and  that  in  general  the  graduates  have 
formed  habits  of  living  which  make  any  income 
less  than  five  thousand  pounds  too  small  for  them. 
It  is  not  long  ago  that  Mr.  Depew  said  there  were 
three  thousand  college  graduates  starving  in  New 
York  city.  If  this  is  so,  and  if  they  are  starving 
because  they  are  graduates,  how  does  college  life 
clip  the  sinews  of  manly  strength!  Not  because 
they  study  Greek  instead  of  German,  or  the  Calcu- 
lus instead  of  Chemistry,  but  because  they  live 
four  years  in  another  world  and  fail  to  acquire 
the  power  of  adjusting  themselves  to  the  con- 
ditions of  actual  life.  The  world  is  strange  to 
them.  The  college  took  them  up  out  of  it  at 
one  point  and  puts  them  down  at  another  where 
the  surroundings  are  new. 

Fortunately  we  may  say  that  the  tone  and 
traits  of  our  college  life  are  mainly  determined 
by  young  men  who  are  earnest  and  who  are  seri- 
ously preparing  for  work.  It  would  not  be  amiss, 
however,  if  students  at  all  our  colleges  were 
watchful  upon  these  points,  viz:  to  see  that  their 
amusements,  jokes  and  other  doings  remain  ra- 
tional and  manly,  and  such  as  will  not  call  forth 
the  unfriendly  criticism  of  serious-minded  people: 
and  that  they  do  not  fall  out  of  sympathy  with 
the  ways  of  the  outside  world  or  its  wholesome 
ambitions. 

While  it  is  well  to  be  so  far  separate  as  to  be 
able  to  pursue  study  free  from  the  cares  of  busi- 
ness, and,  perhaps,  also  from  the  distractions  of 


142      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

social  life  at  home,  it  is  not  well,  upon  this  dif- 
ference, to  form  new  sets  of  habits  which  lessen 
our  power  to  cope  with  the  "stern  realities." 
That  world,  after  all,  is  where  we  must  do  our 
work  and  win  our  victories.  If  it  3'ields  its  hold 
upon  us  for  a  time,  we  should  none  the  less  note 
the  pulse  that  beats  in  its  strong  hand,  a  hand 
that  will  presently  close  upon  us  with  a  grip  all 
the  more  firm  because  we  have  had  a  period  of 
freedom  to  prepare  for  its  pressure. 


XV 
THE  EASY  CHAIR 

Looking  back  in  leisurely  retrospect,  in  the  tem- 
per of  one  who  has  passed  the  examinations,  last 
term  was  a  very  good  one — good  in  many  ways, — 
quiet  in  the  first  place;  for  the  playful  hostility 
of  classes  had  been  softened  by  friendly  inter- 
course, to  a  feeling  that  was  much  better  than 
mere  tolerance  of  each  other.  The  heroes  of  '99, 
and  those  of  '00  marched  to  their  class  suppers 
cheered  rather  than  molested.  Verily  it  is  a  good 
thing  to  see  these  brethren  dwelling  together,  and 
working  side  by  side  in  peace  and  unity. 

Quiet  in  the  second  place,  because  we  had  no 
games  at  which  we  could  make  the  welkin  ring 
with  our  shouts :  and  so  we  had  a  chance  to  think 
over  our  victories.  We  did  rehearse  them  in  many 
a  quiet  evening  hour,  and  felt  a  warming  sense 
of  satisfaction  in  them — something  akin  to  pride, 
yet  not  vainglorious  boasting;  for  we  should  be 
a  poor  lot  if  we  could  not  catch  the  contagion 
of  a  more  manly  spirit  than  that  from  the  most 
modest  team  we  ever  had. 

But  those  were  great  games.     Never  mind  the 

scores  just  now, — but  the  way  they  were  played, 
143 


144      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

— the  pluck,  the  determination,  the  undaunted 
spirit;  the  being  stronger  under  discourage- 
ments. There  were  plays  of  which  the  twentieth 
memory  is  enough  to  kindle  again  our  old  en- 
thusiasm. 

Then  our  indoor  life  didn't  allow  us  to  forget 
that  we  still  have  muscle  and  agility.  There  were 
the  mid-winter  sports  in  the  gymnasium,  where 
the  spectator  could  see  men  kicking  well  up  to- 
ward the  rafters,  and  could  see  that  boxing  is 
not  all  done  with  the  mouth. 

Then  the  Glee  Club  made  a  good  beginning, 
well  followed  up  in  the  vacation  trip.  It  was  a 
good  term  for  musical  practice,  and  this  plays 
a  larger  and  better  part  in  college  life  as  time 
goes  on.  Last  term  any  walker  on  Pardee  ter- 
race, in  the  late  afternoon  when  recitations  were 
over,  could  hear  a  chorus,  or  catch  now  and  then 
strains  from  the  band,  a  little  discordant,  per- 
haps at  times,  but  improving  from  day  to  day; 
and  even  at  its  worst  how  infinitely  better  than 
the  howls  and  horn  blowing  with  which  the  leisure 
of  students  might  be  filled  in  the  old  times. 

Then  the  Alumni  reunions  and  banquets  in 
Philadelphia. — when  the  fires  were  rekindled  and 
the  life  blood  of  old  Lafayette  went  tingling  out 
to  the  finger  tips. 

Then  the  class-room  work  and  the  study  lamp 
— it  was  a  good  term  for  that;  and  that's  the 
real  thing.  We  may  talk  little  of  it,  and  catch 
only  now  and  then  a  hint  of  it  in  college  life  as  it 


THE  EASY  CHAIR  145 

appears  in  the  newspapers,  especially  in  college 
newspapers ;  but  our  real  purposes,  our  real  am- 
bitions and  real  hopes  center  about  the  proper 
work  of  the  college.  It  was  a  good  term  in  the 
main,  in  all  the  laboratories,  in  the  English  room, 
in  the  Greek  and  Latin  rooms.  Good  hours  for 
us  are  those  we  give  to  Milton,  to  Plato,  to  genial 
Horace,  and  those  fervent  songs  with  which  the 
early  church  resounded. 

One  drawback  was  those  breaks  in  health  which 
can  be  avoided  in  winter  only  by  care,  and  the 
jolly  college  boy  is  a  stranger  to  care.  There 
was  a  good  deal  of  real  sickness.  Possibly  also 
some  that  is  known  as  "college  sickness,"  but 
it  is  reassuring  to  see  a  plucky  fellow,  when  he 
has  sprained  his  ankle,  hobble  up  two  long  flights 
of  stairs  on  crutches,  so  as  not  to  miss  recitation ! 
Many  a  fellow  was  in  the  class-room  wheezing 
and  coughing  when  he  should  have  been  bundled 
up  in  bed  drinking  catnip  tea,  or  some  other  of 
mother's  good  remedies.  But  while  we  are  speak- 
ing of  "should  have  been's,"  we  may  go  further 
back  and  say,  they  should  not  have  caught  the 
colds. 

Was  I  speaking  of  drawbacks?  Well  let  by- 
gones be  bygones  for  the  most  part;  but  before 
the  genial  optimism  of  good  weather,  good  wheel- 
ing, good  walking,  fresh  foliage,  fair  flowers  and 
base-ball  victories,  has  us  completely  shielded  un- 
der its  silver  canopy,  let  us  have  one  more  good 
growl  at  the  college  paths.  What  with  light 


146      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

snows,  light  frosts  thawing  noonday's,  and  the 
composition  of  the  paths  themselves,  how  per- 
sistently sloppy  they  have  been!  And  what  a 
variety  of  sloppiness — from  melting  snow, 
through  thin  muddy  paste,  down  to  the  consistency 
of  sticky  clay  well  wet,  that  clings  to  your  shoes 
and  won't  be  shaken  off,  or  scraped  off,  but  when 
dry  the  next  morning,  will  fall  off,  of  its  own 
weight,  to  be  trodden  into  your  Brussels  carpet! 
Three,  four,  half  a  dozen  times  a  day,  three 
hundred  of  us  more  or  less,  have  walked  these 
trails  of  mortar,  to  dinner  and  back,  to  supper 
and  back,  to  recitation  and  back, — but  have  had 
our  thoughts  too  firmly  fixed  on  "higher  things," 
to  be  much  incommoded  after  all  by  such  trifles. 
Yet,  these  very  paths  are  sceleris  vestigia  nostri, 
and  are  proof  enough,  if  proof  were  needed,  that 
the  "rolling  years"  have  not  yet  brought  back 
the  golden  millennial  day. 

A  good  term  for  reflection  too,  with  many  oc- 
casions that  invited  it,  and  many  opportunities 
for  it.  A  good  season  to  take  in  the  seeds  of 
truth  and  warm  them  into  vitality  in  the  soil 
of  our  thinking.  And  how  an  idea  does  grow 
when  thus  rooted  and  tended — rising  and  taking 
us  with  it  upward  and  outward  in  its  growth. 

Student  life  is  an  atmosphere  of  thinking. 
There  are  the  lecture  rooms  with  their  teaching 
and  their  enthusiasms — communicable;  there  are 
great  books,  their  pages  bristling  with  thoughts. 
It  lifts  our  natures  a  little  even  to  feel  their 


THE  EASY  CHAIR  147 

covers ;  but  to  have  them  opened  and  expounded, 
to  have  them  at  our  elbows,  to  read  and  study 
them,  to  ponder  over  them  as  we  sit  in  the  easy 
chair,  to  talk  them  over  at  the  fireside  of  a  friend 
— what  a  life  to  live !  bringing  home  to  us,  the 
blessed  realization  of  our  littleness  and  our  power, 
and  the  greatness  of  truth,  and  all  the  time  the 
great  light  flashing  its  gleams  to  us  under  the 
lifting  mists. 

And  the  prayer  hall,  and  the  fellowship  of  fer- 
vent hearts  in  praise  and  petition.  And  the 
chapel  pulpit,  with  its  message  of  peace  and  in- 
spiration. No  message  is  more  welcome  to  us 
than  this,  if  it  be  genuine.  Such  were  those  we 
had  last  term,  from  our  own  preachers,  from 
Bishop  Rulison — a  strong  man,  assuring  us  again 
of  the  strength  and  security  of  the  Christian 
faith;  from  General  Eaton,  ripe  in  manifold  ex- 
perience, testifying  to  the  supreme  utility  of  dis- 
cipline and  religious  training,  from  Mr. 
Jenanyan,  the  Armenian,  telling  us  of  conse- 
cration. Mr.  Studd  could  not  come  to  us.  Was 
it  a  judgment  upon  us  for  the  advertising  we 
gave  him  a  "cricket  player"  and  an  "athlete"? 
If  a  man  be  sincere  and  earnest,  and  have  God's 
true  message  in  his  life  and  his  voice,  that  is 
enough.  If  his  theme  be  the  deepening  of  the 
spiritual  life,  we  shall  be  glad  to  hear  him  for  that 
alone.  These  are  the  first,  the  last,  and  the  best 
interests  and  need  not  be  commended  to  us  by  an 
appeal  to  anything  lower. 


XVI 

SOME  FREAKS  OF  COLLEGE  SENTIMENT 

Much  that  passes  for  student  sentiment  is  not 
the  average  of  actual  opinion  and  feeling  among 
the  fellows,  but  an  average  of  what  is  most  ob- 
trusive and  outspoken  among  them.  Thus  a  false 
sentiment  may  seem  to  spring  up  from  the  feeling 
of  a  few,  if  the  few  are  loud  in  the  expression  of 
it,  and  set  it  forth  in  phrases  that  are  pat  and 
catchy.  It  is  only  within  recent  years,  for  ex- 
ample, that  we  have  heard  the  word  "stuff"  com- 
monly used  to  designate  the  subject-matter  of  any 
and  every  study.  All  the  mathematics  are  "stuff" 
now,  German  also,  Anglo-Saxon,  Strength  of  Ma- 
terials, Chemistry,  Histology,  Homer,  Horace, 
Shakespeare,  even  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is 
"stuff"  when  the  subject  of  study,  and  marked 
off  in  tasks. 

It  must  have  started  with  some  fellow  who  felt 
no  interest  in  his  task,  and  found  it  irksome,  un- 
intelligible, and  at  last  unendurable.  We  can  see 
him  fling  it  aside  in  disgust,  and  his  simple  ejacu- 
lation, "Stuff,"  was  so  shrewdly  expressive  that  it 
struck  a  sympathetic  chord  in  the  experience  of 

many  another.     The  word  may  now  be  taken  to 
148 


FREAKS   OF   COLLEGE    SENTIMENT     149 

indicate  a  general  attitude  and  feeling  toward 
study — expressing  therefore  a  quasi  sentiment ; 
and  the  worst  of  it  is,  that  the  very  phrase  has 
helped  to  create  and  crystallize  the  sentiment. 

The  word  is  not  in  every  instance  used  with 
conscious  disparagement,  but  it  shades  that  way, 
and  will  seldom  be  heard  without  the  suggestion 
of  that  reproach  which  attaches  to  the  worst  mean- 
ing of  "stuff,"  viz,  "worthless  matter,"  "trash." 

Suppose  some  fellow,  instead  of  disgust,  had 
felt  a  thrill  of  pleasant  appreciation  over  his 
Goethe  or  his  calculus,  and  was  so  delighted  with 
the  results  in  working  out  a  passage  or  a  problem 
that  in  the  moment  of  his  victory  he  exclaimed 
"Pure  gold !"  as  though  he  had  found  a  treasure. 
Think  of  the  sentiment  that  might  arise  if  there 
were  the  same  contagion  of  feeling  as  in  the  other 
case ! 

These  two  extremes  mark  the  limits  between 
which  sentiment  upon  college  studies  may  vibrate 
— with  a  main  tendency  to  the  lower  point  we 
might  suppose;  but  here  again  we  should  most 
likely  be  misled  by  the  outspokenness  of  the  mi- 
nority. Most  students  take  a  genuine  interest  in 
their  studies.  Many  are  fond  of  them.  They  do 
not  proclaim  their  love  from  the  housetops,  how- 
ever. In  fact  the  regular,  diligent  and  virtuous 
student  has  no  chronicler.  The  public  is  more 
interested  in  the  other  fellows — they  are  piquant 
and  they  get  into  the  papers. 

It  would  be  a  great  gain  if,  in  those  estimates 


150      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

that  underlie  college  sentiment,  the  true  interests 
of  college  life  could  have  their  real  value.  There 
is  very  little  uncertainty  as  to  what  those  inter- 
ests are,  even  in  the  minds  of  the  most  thoughtless. 
The  purpose  of  going  to  college  is  mainly  served 
by  the  course  of  study.  Recreations  are  both 
pleasant  and  necessary;  it  is  well  now  and  then 
to  have  a  good  time ;  the  fellowships  of  the  campus 
are  delightful,  and  various  student  interests  come 
in  incidentally  and  serve  a  good  purpose  too,  but 
we  defeat  the  main  end  of  a  course  in  higher  edu- 
cation when  we  regard  the  obligations  of  study 
as  in  some  way  an  interference  with  our  real 
business  and  wishes. 

I  have  thought  of  this  in  connection  with  cer- 
tain items  and  articles  in  The  Touchstone.  With 
that  clever  writer  "Breezy  Bill,"  study  seems  an 
impertinence.  He  flouts  scholarly  ambition, 
sneers  at  college  honors,  and  in  general  dispar- 
ages diligence — a  strange  attitude  for  a  serious 
man.  The  fact  is,  he  is  not  serious.  Most  of 
what  he  says  is  merely  a  conventional  concession 
to  that  kiddish  sentiment  of  aversion  to  work, 
which,  whatever  its  following,  finds  large  voice 
in  the  school  and  college  world. 

Seen  through  that  atmosphere,  duty  has  no 
charms  except  for  milksops  and  "grinds."  Dis- 
cipline and  recurring  tasks  are  forms  of  weariness 
that  seem  but  dim  and  distant  as  seen  through  the 
smoke  that  jolly  fellows  make  in  their  hours  of 
freedom. 


FREAKS   OF   COLLEGE    SENTIMENT     151 

"The  Poler  is  an  Animal,"  says  our  writer,  "of 
unlimited  capacity  for  study.  Books  are  his  com- 
panions ;  problems  his  delight.  .  .  .  Friends 
are  of  small  consequence  to  him.  .  .  .  Earthly 
joy  is  complete  when  engaged  in  polishing  the 
questions  of  the  quiz,  or  the  shoes  of  the  pro- 
fessor— heavenly  when  listening  to  a  didactic  ser- 
mon in  the  chapel."  So  the  poor  "poler"  goes  on 
allowing  "his  body  and  his  social  nature  to 
atrophy," — wheels  whirling  in  his  deluded  head. 

But  from  time  to  time,  through  the  rings  of 
curling  smoke  there  come  saner  glimpses.  "Yet 
eliminating  all  prejudice  for  the  time,  any  sane- 
minded  person  must  acknowledge  that  the  poler 
is  forming  habits  which  will  be  of  value  to  him 
when  he  has  flown  from  under  the  wings  of  his 
Alma  Mater.  He  studies  hard  and  regularly. 
The  continual  effort  to  be  perfect  in  his  studies 
tends  to  render  him  accurate,  painstaking  and 
industrious." 

The  writer  confesses  that  the  "poler"  is  con- 
demned by  students,  "not  so  much  for  studying 
all  the  time,  as  because  the  poler  surpasses  them 
in  the  same  work,  by  studying  while  they  are  en- 
gaged in  some  kind  of  recreation." 

This  freak  sentiment  of  hostility  to  study  there- 
fore is  one  of  which  the  writer  does  not  seriously 
approve.  That  which  he  lays  aside  to  get 
glimpses  of  the  real  truth  is  a  "prejudice." 

It  seems  a  pity  to  create  a  sentiment  that  con- 
demns honest  work;  or  to  give  currency  to  ideals 


152      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

that  handicap  serious  young  fellows  with  a  dis- 
paraging epithet.  "Grind"  is  a  hard  name  in 
college  parlance.  A  fellow  must  be  made  of  strong 
stuff  not  to  wince  under  it.  It  may  make  little 
difference  to  those  who  can  stand  it,  but  the 
great  harm  comes  to  the  scores  of  fellows  who  are 
not  so  strong,  whose  attitude  toward  serious  work 
may  be  wholly  determined  by  their  fear  of  in- 
curring such  a  reproach. 

Can  it  be  that  good  students  must  often  make 
a  secret  of  their  diligence,  and  thus  carry  water 
on  both  shoulders?  Alas,  that  any  man  in  college 
should  ever  have  to  pretend  indifference  to  study 
in  order  to  stand  well  with  his  fellows !  Mr.  Owen 
Wister,  the  other  day  at  Harvard,  told  his  audi- 
ence how  he  now  regrets  that  in  college  he  did 
not  feel  like  associating  with  "grinds." 

Then  the  relation  of  students  to  members  of  the 
faculty.  In  that  same  false  atmosphere  of  boyish 
sentiment  the  faculty  seems  to  be  the  natural 
enemy.  To  "polish  the  shoes  of  the  professor" 
is  about  the  lowest  depth  of  offending  to  which 
a  man  can  sink,  and  has  a  name  that  carries  more 
ignominy  than  any  other  epithet  heard  on  any 
campus ;  yet  it  seems  a  natural  thought  that  the 
professor  should  be  the  student's  best  friend. 
True,  the  office  itself  does  not  make  him  so. 
Friendship  must  still  depend  upon  qualities  of 
heart  and  nature.  The  professor  must  be  mag- 
netic if  he  would  be  attractive.  It  is  entirely  pos- 
sible that  in  individual  cases,  members  of  the  fac- 


FREAKS   OF  COLLEGE    SENTIMENT     153 

ulty  may  lack  genuine  sympathy  with  student 
life,  or  may  have  personal  qualities  of  disposition 
or  character  that  make  intimate  relations  with 
them  quite  undesirable,  but  the  whole  situation — 
the  very  purpose  of  their  association — suggests 
that  the  student  should  find  in  his  intercourse 
with  his  teacher  the  best  fruits  of  helpful  friend- 
ship. Is  he  free  to  seek  that  friendship?  Is  in- 
timacy with  the  professor  entirely  safe?  Can  a 
student  show  more  than  decent  courtesy  to  his 
professor  without  incurring  the  odium  of  "polish- 
ing shoes" — as  though  he  were  seeking  favor  by 
some  shallow  fraud? 

Perhaps  I  overstate  the  situation.  I  certainly 
do  if  we  have  in  mind  only  this  college.  Per- 
sonal relations  are  surely  very  pleasant  here,  but 
in  college  life  generally,  intercourse  between  stu- 
dents and  members  of  the  faculty  goes  little  be- 
yond the  class-room  and  official  college  business — 
a  loss  to  both  student  and  teacher.  Indeed,  in 
this  relation  the  professor  needs  the  student  as 
much  as  the  student  the  professor.  Least  of  all 
should  they  be  kept  apart  by  any  false  or  freak- 
ish sentiment  or  by  any  misconception  of  the  re- 
lations in  which  they  stand. 


IIAX 

WHAT  THE  PEWS  REQUIRE  OF  THE 
PULPIT 

The  speaker  said,  in  part,  the  pew  requires  in 
general  of  the  pulpit  the  highest  form  of  pru- 
dence. Our  American  poet-philosopher  tells  us 
there  are  three  levels  of  prudence ;  I  may  not  give 
his  exact  words,  but  his  thought  is  something 
like  this:  On  the  first  level  are  those  who  ap- 
preciate the  utility  of  the  symbol.  That  is  com- 
mon sense;  and  these  get  health  and  wealth  and 
all  material  good.  On  the  second  level  are  those 
who  appreciate  the  beauty  of  the  symbol.  This 
is  taste,  and  these  get  aesthetic  enjoyment  and 
culture  and  knowledge.  On  the  third  level  they 
know  the  value  of  that  which  is  signified  by  the 
symbol.  That  is  spiritual  insight;  and  these  get 
reality. 

That  is  why  we  require  this  highest  form  of 
prudence  of  the  pulpit.  We  want  reality.  We 
do  so  hunger  for  certainties — to  stand  upon  the 
rock,  and  have  no  shifting  sands  under  our  feet. 
There  is  no  realm  in  which  we  are  so  much  en- 
titled to  this  experience  and  feeling  of  solidity 
as  in  the  realm  of  spiritual  truth.  Scientific 
154 


THE  PEW  AND  THE  PULPIT      155 

truth  may  come  into  question,  we  may  lose  con- 
fidence in  our  social  or  political  progress,  but  woe 
to  us  if  we  have  not  from  the  pulpit  a  clear  and 
ringing  note  upon  the  eternal  verities.  Let  Hy- 
mensens  and  Philetus  and  the  other  teachers  of 
error  say  what  they  please  so  long  as  you  breth- 
ren stand  and  say  from  your  hearts  what  Paul 
said  to  Timothy — "Nevertheless  the  foundation 
of  God  standeth  sure." 

In  your  ministration  of  this  truth,  of  course 
our  requirements  are  high,  for  we  have  our  ideals. 
But  in  this  you  are  not  alone.  Every  worker 
must  confront  a  comparison  of  his  work  with 
that  of  the  ideal  worker  in  his  department. 

If  it  is  true  that  the  preacher  cannot  preach 
too  well,  it  is  equally  true  that  the  teacher  can- 
not teach  too  well,  nor  the  physician  heal  too  well ; 
and  there  is  a  sense  in  which  the  life  and  work  of 
the  engineer,  the  farmer  and  the  carpenter  make 
drafts  upon  them  which  require  better  than  their 
best.  They  cannot  be  too  diligent,  too  accurate, 
too  sagacious,  or  too  manly.  No  man  ever  did 
a  work  that  required  skill,  too  skillfully ;  that  re- 
quired watchfulness,  with  too  much  vigilance; 
that  required  fidelity,  with  too  much  faithfulness. 

Your  work,  however,  is  unlike  that  of  other  call- 
ings in  the  ideals  of  its  spiritual  quality  and  its 
high  motive.  Men  may  be  conceited  in  other  work 
if  they  must — be  well  pleased  with  the  way  they 
sing  or  play  or  sell  goods  or  write  books  or  plead 
law,  but  the  message  of  God's  love  passes  from 


156      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

simple  heart  to  simple  heart,  and  only  through 
the  medium  of  absolute  sincerity. 

So  much  for  quality;  now  as  to  quantity.  I 
used  to  think  that  our  modern  inability  to  endure 
long  sermons  was  a  proof  of  degeneracy.  I  am 
not  so  sure  of  that  now.  Nor  is  it  so  very  mod- 
ern. George  II  used  to  say  of  the  fifteen  minute 
discourses  of  Bishop  Newton — "Good  short  ser- 
mons." And  he  brought  the  bishop  to  that  limit 
by  frankly  telling  him  that  after  listening  fifteen 
minutes  he  was  liable  to  take  cold. 

But  sermons  used  to  be  long,  as  though  for 
discipline.  I  have  even  caught  curious  hints  that 
the  pulpit  took  a  strange  kind  of  pleasure  in  the 
weariness  of  the  pew,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Scotch 
clergyman  who,  being  asked  if  it  did  not  make 
him  tired  to  preach  so  long,  replied,  "Na,  na. 
I'm  no  tired ;  but  it  wad  do  your  heart  guid  whiles 
to  see  how  tired  the  folk  get." 

"Can  he  sit,"  says  the  stern  covenanter  in  "Old 
Mortality,"  "can  he  sit  six  hours  on  the  damp  hill- 
side, listening  to  a  sermon  ?"  Implying  that  if  he 
can,  then  he  stands  the  critical  test. 

But,  brethren  of  the  pulpit,  if  it  were  a  ques- 
tion of  discipline,  we  now  have  other  tests  of  en- 
durance, and  you  need  not  burden  yourselves  with 
that  responsibility.  So  much  the  worse  for  you 
perhaps ;  for  it  is  easier  to  make  a  long  sermon 
than  a  short  one  if,  in  the  ease  of  the  short  one, 
what  it  lacks  in  length  must  be  made  up  in  point 
and  power.  It  is  easy  to  string  out  formal 


THE  PEW  AND  THE  PULPIT      157 

treatises  on  theology — one  hour  or  two ;  but  if  you 
are  stating  God's  vital  truth,  and  in  such  a  way 
that  every  word  feels  the  living  touch  of  your  own 
experience,  ten  minutes  is  a  good  while  to  talk.  If 
you  are  saying,  not  something  about  the  truth 
as  you  have  read  or  heard  it,  but  the  truth  itself 
as  you  know  it,  as  you  feel  it,  and  as  you  are 
trying  to  live  it,  ten  minutes,  brethren,  is  a  good 
while  to  talk. 

I  think  we  require  too  much  if  we  expect  three 
such  sermons  a  week.  That  task  is  beyond  the 
capacity  of  the  average  man.  A  man  like  John 
Wesley  could  do  it  and  even  more — fifteen  ser- 
mons a  week  on  the  average  for  fifty  years,  and 
never  weary ;  but  he  was  a  man  of  peculiar  power 
and  vitality. 

I  was  speaking  to  a  group  of  clergymen  lately 
upon  this  point  and  asking  them  how  they  accom- 
plished such  feats  of  labor.  "By  being  method- 
ical in  my  work,"  answered  one.  That  seemed 
significant  and  yet  required  further  explanation, 
which  was  promptly  forthcoming.  "By  being 
methodical;  that  is,  I  have  a  method,  and  my 
method  is  to  preach  one  old  sermon  each  Sunday." 

And  why  not?  I've  heard  many  a  sermon  which 
I  would  like  to  hear  again  and  again. 

The  pew  should  require  of  the  pulpit  nothing 
which  will  prevent  the  pulpit  from  making  ju- 
dicious use  of  its  past  studies. 


XVIII 
EZEKIEL'S  WATCHMAN 

Ezekiel  xxxiii:  1-7. 

The  situation  contemplated  is  military,  but  is 
instantly  turned  by  the  prophet  to  a  spiritual  ap- 
plication— the  perils  of  wickedness.  Men  in  sin 
must  be  faithfully  warned.  We  must  plead  with 
them  to  turn  from  their  evil  ways. 

Not  all  are  watchmen — only  one.  "If  the  peo- 
ple of  the  land  take  a  man  of  their  coasts  and  set 
him  for  their  watchman."  Yet  if  we  know  the 
lost  condition  of  men  without  God,  how  can  we 
withhold  the  service  of  warning?  If  we  know 
what  deliverance  is ;  if  we  know  the  wretchedness 
and  perils  of  men  unsaved ;  if  we  know  how  human 
destinies  hang  in  the  balance,  quivering,  and  that 
a  touch,  a  word  may  open  some  man's  heart  to 
the  message  of  God,  how  can  we  withhold  the  word 
of  warning?  Each  disciple  must  let  his  light 
shine;  each  must  in  his  own  way  do  his  part  to 
rouse  men,  and  point  them  to  the  way  of  safety. 

But  the  regularly  constituted  watchman,  the 
minister  of  God,  is  set  apart  in  a  special  way  and 
has  fearful  responsibilities. 

We  should  not  urge  men  to  enter  the  ministry ; 
158 


EZEKIEL'S  WATCHMAN  159 

we  should  rather  urge  them  not  to  do  so.  If 
God's  call  is  upon  them,  they  cannot  be  turned 
aside.  "Necessity  is  laid  upon  me,"  said  Paul, 
"woe  is  unto  me  if  I  preach  not  the  gospel."  If 
God's  call  is  not  upon  them,  they  should  by  all 
means  be  dissuaded. 

What  the  call  is  I  cannot  tell.  You  that  have 
heard  it  know  best.  Judging  from  what  I  have 
seen  I  might  venture  to  say  that  it  is  not  piety, 
however  fervent.  Nor  is  it  the  gift  of  speech, 
however  fluent.  Words  are  nothing.  Men  can 
multiply  words  without  knowledge.  Far  more 
likely  that  slowness  of  speech  would  be  a  sign  of 
the  call;  for  this  message  must  be  put  in  words 
carefully  chosen.  The  great  truth  must  be  sim- 
ply and  briefly  told. 

The  mightiest  of  God's  ministers,  Moses,  was 
reluctant  to  accept  his  mission  from  this  very 
mistake  of  supposing  that  a  glib  tongue  was  nec- 
essary. "I  am  of  slow  speech  and  of  a  slow 
tongue"  he  said.  "And  the  Lord  said  unto  him, 
who  hath  made  man's  mouth  .  .  .  Go,  and  I 
will  be  with  thy  mouth,  and  teach  thee  what  thou 
shalt  say." 

Speaking  as  we  must  from  the  human  side,  an 
important  element  of  the  call  would  seem  to  be  an 
appreciation  of  the  need  of  this  service.  That 
men  are  lost  in  sin,  and  that  human  life  as  we 
commonly  live  it  is  full  of  vanity  are  facts  that 
must  come  very  vividly  before  your  mind  and 
press  upon  your  heart  with  such  a  burden  that 


160      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

you  cannot  restrain  your  hand  from  the  task  of 
plucking  brands  as  from  the  burning.  And  you 
must  know  well  the  remedy,  God's  love  in  Christ. 
You  must  know  it  not  as  a  theory,  but  as  a  fact, 
that  has  brought  abounding  joy  and  comfort  to 
your  own  heart. 

Then,  as  to  qualifications.  In  this  record  they 
are  vigilance  and  fidelity.  By  implication  there 
must  be  a  strong  sound  body,  for  there  is  much 
hardness  to  endure.  There  must  be  a  keen  well- 
trained  mind,  for  you  must  think  with  precision 
and  if  possible  with  force.  These  divine  themes 
must  be  firmly  held.  Grasp  them  well  and  tighten 
your  grip  at  every  step  in  your  discourse,  for  it 
is  only  by  such  treatment  that  the  profound  truths 
of  scripture  are  adequately  opened  to  the  intelli- 
gence of  hearers. 

We  note  I  think  too  frequently  in  pulpit  work, 
the  lack  of  this  firm  and  manly  grip.  The  theme 
is  a  grand  one,  it  opens  with  fair  promise,  but 
the  thread  of  a  great  truth  is  presently  lost,  the 
fabric  of  the  discourse  falls  flabby  and  at  length 
unravels  so  that  at  the  end  there  is  nothing  for 
us  to  carry  home. 

Then  as  to  the  motive,  it  must  be  love  of  the 
Master  and  love  of  men.  There  must  be  no  self 
in  this  work.  In  any  man's  pulpit  work,  the  mo- 
ment it  appears  that  what  he  is  doing  is  in  the 
nature  of  a  performance,  and  that  he  is  con- 
sciously prominent  in  it  as  a  performer,  from  that 
moment  his  influence  with  us  in  divine  things  is 


EZEKIEL'S  WATCHMAN  161 

dead.  We  may  admire  his  rhetoric,  his  language, 
his  gestures,  but  his  truth,  even  if  he  speak  the 
truth,  has  lost  its  ring  and  falls  flat.  In  this 
work  any  affectation  whether  of  feeling  or  of  vir- 
tue is  abominable. 

If  the  bush  burns  before  you  and  you  turn  aside 
to  see  why  it  is  not  consumed,  there  will  come  to 
you  from  the  midst  of  the  bush,  the  words,  "Draw 
not  nigh  hither;  put  off  thy  shoes  from  off 
thy  feet,  for  the  place  whereon  thou  standest 
is  holy  ground."  And  you  will  hide  your 
face. 

I  must  not  shrink  from  talking  to  you  very 
frankly  about  this  and  would  have  you  examine 
yourselves  very  carefully.  Does  it  seem  to  you 
that  you  do  well  in  God's  service?  Your  fervor, 
your  unction,  your  eloquence — do  they  seem  to 
justify  a  reasonable  complaisance?  Does  the 
gospel  message  seem  to  gather  some  momentum 
from  you  and  your  method?  Face  that  error 
frankly,  and  correct  it.  If  you  cannot  correct  it, 
then  be  seriously  counseled  to  choose  some  other 
work. 

A  kindred  thought  is  the  danger  of  a  profes- 
sional manner  in  what  you  do  in  this  service. 
There  are  professional  traditions  in  the  pulpit 
that  have  great  influence ;  there  are  certain  ex- 
ercises to  be  gone  through  again  and  again. 
Repetition  and  habit  may  lead  to  formality.  But 
the  message  must  come  every  time  warm  and  di- 
rect from  your  heart.  The  burden  of  each 


162      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

prayer  as  though  it  were  the  first  you  ever  carried 
to  the  throne;  each  word  of  exhortation  with  the 
freshness  of  your  first  appeal  to  dying  men. 

These  are  great  truths  with  which  you  have 
to  do.  Momentous  interests  are  involved  in  the 
immortal  nature  and  destiny  of  your  fellow  men. 
Do  you  fully  realize  it?  Do  these  truths  touch 
your  hearts?  If  they  do,  speak  an  honest  word 
to  us,  a  sincere  word,  right  to  the  point,  and 
straight  from  your  convictions.  Do  that  and 
we  will  go  to  hear  you.  We  will  go  through  rain 
and  fire  and  flood  to  hear  you. 

There  is  no  call  that  so  appeals  to  the  deep 
and  conscious  needs  of  men  as  the  call  to  repent 
for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand.  John 
preached  it  and  the  people  flocked  out  to  hear 
him.  Many  of  his  hearers  he  called  a  generation 
of  vipers.  He  said  the  ax  must  be  laid  unto  the 
root  of  the  tree,  and  that  the  fact  that  Abraham 
was  their  father  would  do  them  no  good ;  yet  they 
crowded  out  to  hear  him,  all  Jerusalem,  all  Judea, 
and  the  regions  round  about  Jordan. 

Be  not  discouraged,  brethren,  though  men 
harden  their  hearts  and  seem  not  to  hear.  Only 
speak  a  sincere  word  of  warning  and  of  hope,  and 
the  busiest  man  in  Wall  street  will  quit  his  gains 
and  bend  his  ear  to  your  voice.  Elijah  was  dis- 
couraged and  went  into  the  wilderness,  sent  then 
to  the  mountain,  where  he  saw  exhibitions  of 
power — wind,  fire,  and  earthquake,  but  God's  real 
power  came  in  less  boisterous  form,  and  he  was 


EZEKIEL'S  WATCHMAN  163 

cheered  and  sent  on  his  high  errand.     Seven  thou- 
sand had  not  bowed  the  knee  to  Baal. 

The  voice  of  the  soul  will  be  heard,  and  that 
voice  is,  "Give  me  the  bread  of  life." 


XIX 

HOW  SHALL  I  GIVE  THEE  UP,  EPHRAIM? 

Hosea  xi:  8. 

No  thought  here  of  an  attempt  to  tell  us  what 
the  love  of  God  is,  but  a  glimpse  of  the  very  love 
itself — a  kind  of  appealing  picture  of  affection! 
Nothing  subtle  or  complicated  about  it — just  a 
simple  exhibition  of  a  sublime  love  quite  intelli- 
gible to  us  because  it  is  so  like  the  healthy  action 
of  human  feeling. 

Like  and  yet  unlike;  for  in  the  next  verse,  the 
ninth,  we  have  this  withholding  of  anger  explained 
by  the  statement,  "For  I  am  God  and  not  man." 
There  appear  notable  differences  of  action  as  com- 
pared with  what  man  would  probably  do.  In 
dealing  with  the  wayward  we  are  very  ready  to 
suspect,  to  blame,  to  rebuke,  to  accuse,  to  con- 
vict, to  punish.  We  have  a  feeling  that  the  wicked 
and  the  criminal  should  be  cast  out.  Even  if  we 
try  to  exhort  and  win  the  wayward  back  we  soon 
reach  the  limits  of  our  patience. 

But  God  cherishes  the  wayward  and  holds  them 
in  love.  God  lingers  over  them  with  patient  ten- 
derness. It  is  just  this  quality  of  divine  love  that 

I  wish  you  to  think  of  this  morning. 
164, 


HOW  SHALL  I  GIVE  THEE  UP?     165 

There  is  no  fact  in  this  world  that  has  greater 
value  for  us  in  our  personal  life  than  this  clinging 
tenderness  of  God's  love  for  us.  "How  shall  I 
give  thee  up!" 

Of  the  love  of  God  in  general  we  are  told  here 
and  there ;  it  is  brought  to  us  in  providence — 
some  event  that  opens  up  the  goodness  of  God 
to  men ;  or  in  personal  experience — some  fine  touch 
of  divine  grace  in  the  inner  life  of  which  we  could 
not  adequately  speak  even  if  it  were  not  too  sacred 
to  be  the  subject  of  remark.  Then  the  words  of 
the  book  about  God's  love.  We  like  to  turn  to 
the  golden  text  (John  iii,  16)  "God  so  loved  the 
world  that  he  gave  his  only  begotten  son  that 
whosoever  believeth  in  him  should  not  perish  but 
have  everlasting  life."  "The  gift"  you  say. 
Nay,  the  gift  is  incidental — only  as  the  measure 
of  the  love.  God  so  loved — that  he  gave. — Noth- 
ing can  surpass  the  simple  sweetness  of  that  mes- 
sage. It  lingers  on  human  lips  and  is  imprinted 
upon  human  hearts.  We  can't  improve  it  by  en- 
largement. Glowing  narrative  adds  nothing  to  it, 
oratory  nothing,  the  vivid  reenactment  of  the 
crucifixion — the  nails  and  the  arms  outspread  and 
the  spear — all  its  cruelties  and  horrors,  the 
passion  play  itself;  in  fact  these  may  fall  rather 
flat  upon  the  ear,  because  they  may  become  con- 
ventional, but  this  little  message  "God  so  loved  the 
world" — is  the  real  thing.  It  holds  us  with  its 
own  charm. 

Yet  in  matters   of  the  spirit  a  full  statement 


166      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

often  has  less  appealing  power  than  a  mere  sug- 
gestion, because  a  suggestion  is  a  challenge  to 
the  lightning  quality  of  imaginative  thought. 
You  have  noticed  that  a  stroke  of  mere  outline 
will  be  instantly  filled  out  to  its  full  form  by  the 
imagination.  Listen  to  a  dozen  pages  upon 
mother's  love, — all  very  good,  but  some  significant 
act  of  motherly  affection  which  you  happen  to  see, 
will  better  open  up  the  depths  of  that  love  to  you 
than  all  that  text. 

"How  shall  I  give  thee  up,  Ephraim? — mine 
heart  is  turned  within  me,  my  repentings  are  kin- 
dled together."  As  though  there  were  a  mighty 
struggle  between  love  and  justice — a  debate — and 
love  wins  in  the  argument !  A  fine  intuition  of 
the  prophet  which  gives  a  picture  of  the  very  at- 
titude of  divine  tenderness  so  beautifully  and 
touchingly  humanized,  yet  divine  in  the  essence 
and  power  of  it.  How  patient  it  is !  How  tender 
and  strong !  "How  shall  I  give  thee  up  ?" 

Anger  would  suggest  instant  judgment.  Jus- 
tice with  her  fair  claims  would  cut  the  offender 
off  at  once.  But  no  emotion  of  anger  can  divert 
this  purpose  of  love ;  no  claim  of  Justice  can  neu- 
tralize it. 

Think  for  a  moment  who  Ephraim  was, — a 
tribe  mighty  but  haughty  and  jealous,  so  eminent 
in  numbers,  in  advantages  and  in  guilt  that  the 
prophet  could  say  "Israel"  and  mean  Ephraim,  or 
say  "Ephraim"  and  mean  all  Israel. 

That  tribe  entered  upon  the  fairest  portion  of 


HOW  SHALL  I  GIVE  THEE  UP?     167 

the  land  of  promise,  but  its  history  is  a  sad  story 
of  descent  from  this  high  place,  through  dissention 
and  distrust  and  ungodliness  and  idolatry — ever 
downward,  a  sad  picture  of  opportunities  wasted 
and  personal  gifts  abused,  a  history  of  sin  and 
decay  and  dissolution.  So  the  message  of  the 
prophet  is  a  message  about  sin  and  judgment  and 
love. 

The  sin  is  the  sin  of  infidelity  to  love,  often,  as 
in  Hosea,  presented  under  the  figure  of  adultery, 
the  most  heinous  of  sins.  We  are  left  to  conclude 
that  it  were  better  for  Ephraim  to  have  lived  out 
in  darkness  with  no  knowledge  of  God,  than  hav- 
ing had  the  light,  to  turn  back  to  darkness. 

Then  the  judgment  upon  this  infidelity — not  a 
stroke  of  God  inflicted  upon  a  man  as  apart  from 
his  sin.  The  judgment  is  the  working  out  of  the 
sin  itself.  Infidelity  can  lead  nowhere  save  to  the 
unutterable  darkness  of  pollution. 

But  through  all  and  over  all  and  after  all,  the 
song  of  God's  love !  The  notes  of  it  rise  above 
every  other  note  of  these  messages  and  in  every 
note  a  prophecy  of  triumph,  because  love  will  pre- 
vail. That  triumph  will  come  through  suffering, 
but  love  is  willing  to  suffer ;  through  long  waiting 
— no  matter,  Ephraim  may  count  upon  the  pa- 
tience of  God ;  the  victory  will  cost,  but  love  never 
counts  the  cost  to  be  estopped  by  it.  Right  on- 
ward moves  love  and  her  song  is  a  song  of  won- 
drous sweetness  and  of  wondrous  power. 

What  a  comfort  for  us  in  this  appeal  of  divine 


168      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

affection!  For  us, — for  we  are  like  Ephraim,  in 
the  hardness  of  our  hearts,  in  our  indifference  to 
the  ordinary  calls  and  obligations  of  the  higher 
life;  and  this  message  is  to  us,  not  that  we  may 
merely  contemplate  the  greatness  of  the  love  of 
God,  but  that  we  may  yield  ourselves  to  it,  that 
we  may  come  under  the  spell  of  its  searching  qual- 
ity, that  we  may  know  the  power  of  it  as  a  motive 
to  righteousness. 

Is  there  not  something  in  that  loving  appeal 
that  tugs  at  our  hearts?  "How  shall  I  let  thee 
Go?"  No  attitude  could  be  more  winning  than 
this  yearning  tenderness. 

Real  love  cannot  give  up  its  object,  and  the  ob- 
ject itself,  when  it  becomes  aware  of  that  love 
comes  under  an  influence  that  it  cannot  long  re- 
sist. 

We  easily  resist  other  appeals.  It  is  amazing 
how  men  can  resist  satire  for  example,  with  its  fine 
home  thrusts — a  very  ready  weapon,  keen,  even 
venomous,  if  you  please,  hurled  in  bitterness  and 
with  unerring  aim;  but  they  at  whom  it  is  aimed 
are  untouched.  Men  seem  to  be  provided  with  an 
armor  of  conceit,  or  self-complaisance  that  turns 
away  the  shafts  of  satire,  so  that  they  fall  broken 
and  harmless  at  the  feet  of  him  whom  they  would 
wound.  Sarcasm  cuts  and  hurts  both  him  that 
gives  and  him  that  gets  it,  but  it  heals  neither. 

It  is  somewhat  the  same  with  law  with  its  hard 
requirements, — the  same  I  mean,  with  reference 
to  any  winning  appeal  to  the  spirits  of  men. 


HOW  SHALL  I  GIVE  THEE  UP?     169 

You  can't  win  men  by  legal  enactment  to  sobriety 
or  purity  or  any  virtue.  Rebuke?  You  can't  re- 
buke a  man  into  the  spirit  of  obedience.  You 
can't  denounce  a  man  into  the  kingdom  of  peace 
and  righteousness.  Thundering  commands  and 
threats  and  penalties — in  the  waywardness  of  our 
stubborn  hearts  we  stand  unmoved  by  these,  may 
even  sneer  at  them  in  our  indifference;  but  if  a 
man  love  us  we  yield  to  that  at  last.  We  may 
hold  out  long,  but  love  suffereth  long  and  is  kind. 
Love  never  faileth.  That  enduring  tenderness 
that  has  the  divine  touch  of  patience — if  you  find 
that  the  warm  currents  of  it  keep  flowing  into 
your  life  you'll  respond  to  it  some  day  or  you 
are  not  a  man.  And  that  is  the  mighty  hope  of 
our  race,  that  men  will,  must,  come  to  know  the 
love  of  God.  "I  drew  them  with  the  cords  of  a 
man"  says  Hosea,  "with  the  bands  of  love"  i.  e. 
with  all  gentle  means  such  as  are  suited  to  man's 
temper,  to  allure  him,  as  it  were,  to  obedience, 
laying  hands  upon  him  gently,  to  draw  him  into 
the  right  way. 

True,  that  even  under  these  circumstances  men 
are  often  obstinate.  We  persist  in  error  after 
we  have  become  aware  of  the  error.  Even  Paul 
yielded  reluctantly  to  the  drawings  of  God's  love. 
It  drew  upon  him  through  conscience.  Paul  was 
a  conscientious  Pharisee,  building  therefore  upon 
the  observance  of  the  law ;  but  candidly,  in  his 
own  heart  he  knew  he  was  not  measuring  up  to 
the  requirements  of  God's  law,  hence  the  stings 


170      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

of  conscience ;  yet  he  persisted.  He  even  in- 
creased the  cruelty  of  his  persecutions,  "breathing 
out,"  as  we  read,  "threatenings  and  slaughter 
against  the  disciples  of  the  Lord,  went  to  the  high 
priest  and  desired  of  him  letters  to  Damascus," 
that  he  might  bring  bound  to  Jerusalem  any 
Christians  he  might  find  there.  So  when  his  vis- 
ion came  he  is  still  making  that  futile  resistance. 

The  Master  knowing  well  the  stubbornness  of 
his  human  temper  said,  "It  is  hard  for  thee  to 
kick  against  the  goads ;"  a  homely  figure,  of  the 
goaded  ox  and  under  the  irritation  of  that  sting 
he  kicks  back  only  to  get  a  deeper  thrust  of  the 
same  goad.  So  we  may  learn  not  only  the  patient 
continuance  of  the  love  of  God,  but  its  increasing 
effectiveness . 

Note  again  who  it  is  whom  God  loves — 
Ephraim!  Of  whom  it  is  said,  "Ephraim  com- 
passeth  me  about  with  lies."  "Ephraim  feedeth 
on  wind  and  followeth  after  the  East  wind.  He 
daily  increaseth  lies  and  desolation."  The  marvel 
is  that  God  can  so  love  Ephraim  the  unlovely. 

Our  human  affection  offers  but  slight  sug- 
gestion of  the  breadth  and  power  of  this  love. 
We  are  narrowed  by  petty  limitations  in  our  love, 
by  prejudices  of  race  and  condition  and  distance. 
What  care  we  for  China  and  the  Chinese,  or  for 
the  swarthy  races  of  the  dark  continent?  Really, 
I  mean,  really? 

It  would  be  folly  to  deny,  as  I  am  certainly  not 
here  to  deny,  the  possibility  of  a  broad,  unselfish 


HOW  SHALL  I  GIVE  THEE  UP?     171 

and  generous  human  affection  and  the  fact  of 
zealous  benevolence  on  the  part  of  God's  good 
children.  The  flaming  heart  is  no  idle  symbol. 

At  times  there  comes  a  great  soul  on  fire  with 
this  zeal  and  wields  a  mighty  power,  marshaling 
the  agencies  of  benevolence,  so  that  under  the 
spirit  of  God  and  by  his  blessing  there  dawns 
upon  a  whole  continent  the  promise  of  regenera- 
tion ;  as  upon  Africa  under  the  inspiration  of  the 
noble  work  of  David  Livingstone.  The  wilderness 
rejoices  and  the  islands  are  made  glad,  as  the  New 
Hebrides  under  the  ministrations  of  Dr.  John 
Paton. 

We  rally  to  these  standards  as  best  we  can,  in 
missionary  effort — too  often  with  a  lack-luster 
zeal,  a  kind  of  faint  and  fad-like  sentiment,  God 
forgive  us !  Where  we  lack  is  in  affection  and  the 
power  of  it.  We  demand  touch  and  eyesight, 
neighborhood  and  in  it,  beauty  and  grace  and 
culture,  congeniality  of  tastes — qualities  that  are 
agreeable.  Toward  people  of  that  kind  and  un- 
der such  circumstances  we  can  at  least  keep  up  a 
fair  pretense  of  kindness ;  but  the  outlying  multi- 
tudes of  the  unattractive  and  the  disagreeable, 
the  thousands  that  are  huddled  together  in  want 
often  and  in  forbidding  and  unsanitary  condi- 
tions in  the  dark  places  of  great  cities ;  and  the 
millions  in  distant  lands,  remote  from  us  not  only 
by  distance,  but  in  civilization  and  mode  of  life — 
what  care  we  for  them? 

The  orient  might  be  wiped  off  the  map  and  all 


172      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

the  slums  submerged  at  a  stroke  and  their  re- 
moval hardly  touch  our  lives  by  the  vibration  of 
a  thought  or  an  interest  or  an  affection.  Their 
absence  would  not  quicken  or  retard  a  pulse  of 
our  throbbing  life ! 

I  speak  of  this  not  as  matter  of  rebuke  to 
ourselves,  though  it  might  well  be  so,  but  to  aid 
us  in  getting  a  conception  of  the  love  of  God, 
the  greatness  of  which  we  fail  to  grasp  if  we  cling 
too  closely  to  the  feeble  analogies  of  our  human 
affection. 

God  loves  Ephraim !  The  love  of  God  goes  out 
in  its  abundance  to  the  lowest  and  the  meanest 
and  the  most  unpromising.  It  does  not  pry  about 
and  feel  its  way  here  and  there  among  men,  cau- 
tiously selecting  this  one  and  that  one  because 
some  excellence  appears  in  them  that  is  worthy  of 
love.  It  pours  itself  with  increasing  flow  upon 
those  that  are  unworthy  as  it  seems  to  us,  and  Lo ! 
those  unworthy  lives  are  illumined  into  beauty,  if 
we  await  the  full  measure  of  God's  work. 

This  is  the  point  we  must  not  fail  to  note, 
there  is  after  all  a  worthiness  in  Ephraim — in  the 
possibilities  of  his  spiritual  betterment;  but  it 
took  the  father's  eye  to  see  that  worthiness  and 
it  will  take  the  love  of  the  father's  heart  to 
quicken  it,  and  bring  Ephraim  forward  to  right- 
eousness. 

As  the  sun  pours  its  radiance  on  the  cold  areas 
of  the  north,  not  because  there's  beauty  in  them, — 
for  they  are  dark  and  bleak — but  because  there  is 


HOW  SHALL  I  GIVE  THEE  UP?     173 

light  and  warmth  in  the  sun ;  and  these  dark  for- 
ests are  illumined  by  it  and  are  at  length  brought 
into  verdure  and  goodly  fruitage. 

The  love  of  God  is  creative.  The  hope  of  the 
world  lies  here — a  magnificent  basis  for  jubilant 
optimism — that  the  creative  spirit  of  love  is  sov- 
ereign in  the  world;  that  at  the  center  of  power 
there  is  a  loving  father  employing  the  resources 
of  infinite  wisdom  to  uplift  our  human  life.  A 
love  with  power.  Not  a  love  that  may  be  at  any- 
time interpreted  as  approval  of  the  sinner;  not 
good  nature,  mere  idle  fondness ;  not  that  frail 
and  impotent  feeling  that  spends  itself  in  feeble 
emotion  as  of  an  overindulgent  human  parent; 
but  a  love  that  endures,  that  has  in  it  energy  and 
tension — like  a  grip  of  steel,  that  can  administer 
stings  and  sufferings  as  well  as  joys,  whatever 
may  be  necessary  to  make  the  object  more  worthy. 
A  renewing  and  vitalizing  power. 

Notice  the  working  of  it  in  the  story  of  the 
prodigal  son.  I  like  to  think  of  that  boy  as  go- 
ing home  not  because  he  was  hungry  but  under  the 
tension  of  the  father's  love  for  him,  a  love  which 
he  at  length  remembers  and  realizes  again.  It 
pulls  him.  The  story  has  many  turns  of  inter- 
esting incident,  but  the  undertone  of  the  whole 
is  the  greatness  of  the  father's  love.  Read  that 
into  every  phrase  of  the  narrative  of  his  disobedi- 
ence and  wandering.  "He  took  his  journey, — 
wasted  his  substance — began  to  be  in  want." 
Through  all  the  father  loves  him.  Dazed  by  dis- 


174      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

tracting  pleasures  he  forgets  it  or  loses  the  con- 
sciousness of  it  for  a  time,  but  in  the  intervals 
of  memory  it  is  there — the  father's  love.  Little 
by  little  it  comes  back  to  him  and  at  last  he 
"comes  to  himself." 

All  this  time  the  father's  love  has  been  tugging 
at  his  heart  and  his  hunger  is  now  the  hunger  of 
the  heart.  The  tension  of  his  father's  love  has 
made  a  permanent  force  into  the  currents  of  which 
he  might  have  thrown  himself  at  any  time.  That 
love  has  never  wholly  lost  its  power  over  him  and 
now  it  asserts  itself  again  with  sufficient  force 
to  win  his  will.  And  note  the  attitude  of  the 
waiting  father.  He  knows  the  boy  will  come  back. 
He  watches  for  him  with  eyes  that  have  in  them 
a  light  that  will  never  fail  even  though  the  eyes 
themselves  be  darkened.  He  sees  his  son  coming 
"when  he  is  yet  a  great  way  off." 

Now  there  are  for  us  two  lessons  here  which 
I  can  state  in  a  word ;  first ;  every  wayward  lad 
is  somebody's  son  and  if  we  would  help  to  bring 
him  back  to  his  better  life  we  can  only  do  so  by 
loving  him.  Secondly — for  ourselves,  to  remem- 
ber God's  tender  love  for  us  in  all  our  wandering 
and  disobedience.  That  memory  will  be  worth 
everything  to  us.  If  we  believe  that  Ephraim  will 
come  back  it  is  because  we  know  that  God,  in  the 
tenderness  of  his  love,  yearned  over  him  and  said : 
"How  shall  I  give  thee  up,  Ephraim?" 


XX 

THE  NOISE  OF  THEM  THAT  SING 

And  he  said,  It  is  not  the  voice  of  them  that  shout  for 
mastery,  neither  is  it  the  voice  of  them  that  cry  for  being 
overcome;  but  the  noise  of  them  that  sing  do  I  hear. — 
Exodus  xxxii,  18. 

Moses  says  this  in  a  tone  that  implies  intense 
disapproval.  Not  that  there  is  anything  wrong 
in  singing  except  where  it  denotes  a  collapse  of 
effort,  the  fatal  letting  down  of  life  from  strenu- 
ous and  honorable  endeavor. 

Moses  detected  that  in  this  abandoned  gayety 
of  the  people,  the  letting  down,  the  yielding  from 
the  hard  purpose  upon  which  this  whole  enter- 
prise of  getting  out  of  Egypt  and  out  of  slavery, 
was  based.  This  very  deliverance  was  the  mission 
of  Moses.  He  knew  its  magnitude,  its  difficulties ; 
he  was  strengthened  for  it  by  more  than  a  com- 
mon insight,  being  admitted  to  the  very  presence 
of  God.  He  knew  therefore,  the  significance  of 
this  fatal  weakness  of  the  people.  Blind  of  heart, 
stubborn,  faltering  in  courage,  they  would  follow 
their  leader  when  that  meant  an  immediate  relief 
from  present  hardship,  but  as  soon  as  new  hard- 
ships were  encountered  they  murmured.  Hunger 
175 


176      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

and  thirst  brought  to  mind  all  the  comforts  of 
their  former  condition,  and  they  longed  for  them 
with  that  easy  abandonment  of  aspiration  and 
hope,  which  you  will  always  find  in  weak  and  self- 
indulgent  natures.  They  break  down  under 
slight  burdens.  Thirst  brings  down  the  price  of 
the  best  and  greatest  things  if  we  are  offered 
water  for  them. 

Hunger  cheapens  the  countless  blessings  of  a 
birthright  until  a  bowl  of  pottage  is  held  to  be  a 
good  price  for  it.  "Behold  I  am  at  the  point  to 
die,"  says  Esau,  "and  what  profit  shall  this  birth- 
right do  to  me?" 

The  argument  seems  fair;  but  there  is  a  fatal 
fallacy  in  it  that  death  is  an  evil.  The  stomach 
always  thinks  so  and  argues  upon  that  presump- 
tion with  a  cogency  that  it  is  hard  to  resist. 
The  stomach  is  a  good  talker,  keeping  up  the 
clamor  of  its  demands;  but  it  never  listens.  "It 
is  a  hard  thing,  my  fellow  citizens,"  said  old  Cato, 
"to  talk  to  the  belly,  for  the  belly  hath  no  ears." 
But  men  are  more  than  mere  stomach,  and  the 
function  of  reason  and  reflection  is  to  give  a  fair 
court,  in  which  the  expediences  of  life  are  to  be 
decided.  These  questions  come  up,  of  course,  and 
they  must  be  decided,  but  to  do  it  fairly,  not  only 
to  listen  to  the  voice  of  hunger  and  consider  the 
pottage,  but  to  consider  the  birthright  as  well,  to 
weigh  death ;  to  weigh  the  value  of  heroic  determi- 
nation, the  value  of  consistency  in  maintaining 
an  honorable  purpose. 


NOISE  OF  THEM  THAT  SING      177 

What  this  people  lacked  was  steadfastness  of 
conviction — so  easily  turned  aside  from  the  sure 
pathway  of  obedience  and  hope !  It  cut  Moses  to 
the  soul  to  catch  the  first  evidences  of  it  in  these 
thoughtless  revelings.  How  could  these  people 
so  soon  forget  that  God  who  alone  could  guide 
them  through  the  perils  of  their  wilderness 
journey?  So  do  not  for  a  moment  suppose  that 
this  dashing  the  tablets  down  and  breaking  them 
was  an  act  of  momentary  petulance  or  passion. 
Rather  it  was  a  righteous  indignation,  a  pro- 
found regret  that  lasted  a  lifetime,  because  he 
realized  the  painful  fact  of  their  weakness.  He 
knew  what  it  meant  in  the  years  of  struggle  that 
were  before  them,  and  he  knew  how  to  deal  with 
it.  Such  weakness  brings  its  natural  penalty, — 
to  be  forever  cut  off  from  the  promise — that  is, 
simply  to  draw  the  curtain  and  close  the  future 
from  them. 

But  there  was  a  remnant  that  could  be  schooled 
to  obedience.  It  was  a  heroic  discipline.  They 
must  take  it,  however.  Their  idol  was  ground  to 
powder  and  the  people  were  made  to  drink  the 
dust  of  that  bovine  gold.  Then  the  summons 
went  forth:  "Who  is  on  the  Lord's  side?"  And 
when  a  small  part  of  them  had  gathered  about 
Moses,  the  sons  of  Levi  passed  through  the  rest 
with  reeking  sword,  filling  their  camp  with  blood 
and  horror.  That  is  what  it  comes  to  when 
wisdom  calls  and  has  in  her  voice  the  sanc- 
tions of  visible  authority.  That  is  what  it 


178      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

means  to  us  whether  the  penalty  comes  on  the  in- 
stant, or  is  delayed  till  the  end  of  our  genera- 
tion. 

And  this  lesson  is  for  us,  brethren,  for  us,  who 
should  go  straight  on  in  the  narrow  way,  shrink- 
ing from  no  duties  because  they  are  hard.  We 
need  to  be  reminded  of  the  perils  of  our  weakness, 
the  tendency  to  slip  from  under  severer  tasks,  to 
shift  the  burden  of  thought,  the  burden  of  labor, 
the  burden  of  a  purpose  steadily  maintained,  to 
yield  to  methods  that  invite  and  that  promise 
easier  ways — or  to  indulgence,  that  fatal  snare  of 
industry — to  yield  and  slip  into  singing  and 
dancing. 

"Not  the  voice  of  them  that  shout  for  mastery, 
neither  is  it  the  voice  of  them  that  cry  for  being 
overcome,  but  the  noise  of  them  that  sing  do  I 
hear." 

These  "voices"  and  "noises"  here  mentioned  are 
the  sounds  that  measure  the  quality  of  human  en- 
deavor. 

The  voice  of  hard  and  persistent  effort — when 
men  hold  steadily  to  their  course — there  is  a  tonic 
in  the  very  note  of  it,  and  there  come  moments  of 
exhilaration  when  the  battle  is  on  and  victory  is 
in  sight,  the  pulse  beats  high,  hope  flaunts  her 
banners,  and  the  eager  host  breaks  forth  in  shouts 
of  triumph. 

Then  there  is  the  cry  of  those  who  are  over- 
come, not  a  glad  cry,  but  of  the  same  quality; 
for  even  an  honorable  cause  must  meet  its  defeats. 


NOISE  OF  THEM  THAT  SING      179 

Nor  is  one  or  ten  or  a  hundred  defeats  a  proof 
of  wrong. 

The  hum  of  common  industry  is  of  this  quality 
too,  and  is  in  fact  a  song  of  triumph.  Although 
it  has  not  that  resonance  of  hearty  acclaim  which 
rings  forth  from  the  battlefield,  it  is  a  paean  of 
victory  and  has  more  solid  gladness  in  it  than  any 
other  sound;  for  in  it  are  mingled  the  harmonies 
of  health,  and  hope,  and  home,  and  honor. 

But  beside  every  seat  of  industry  there  is  a 
nestling  brood  of  the  idle.  Here  are  those  who 
would  shirk  duty,  throw  off  the  harness  of  toil 
and  slip  away  into  the  easy  course  of  dalliance 
and  singing. 

By  every  hard  fought  Waterloo  there  is  a  Bel- 
gium's capitol  with  its  "beauty  circle  proudly 
gay"  within  sound  of  the  cannon's  opening  roar, 
and  many  are  there  in  festivity  who  ought  to  be 
in  the  fight.  The  hand  of  judgment  is  lifted 
against  such  dalliance. 

You  can  readily  see  that  I  am  not  decrying  any 
particular  form  of  pleasure,  but  the  substitution 
of  pleasure  as  such  for  the  serious  pursuits  and 
purposes  of  manhood.  We  do  not  develop  as  we 
should  that  true  and  strong  capacity  to  persevere 
in  the  way  of  achievement,  though  that  way  be 
steep  and  rugged. 

"We  are  a  mere  number,"  says  Horace,  "born 
to  consume  the  fruits  of  the  earth."  Horace  is 
speaking  of  Homer  and  the  Homeric  ideals  of  life, 
the  splendid  endurance  of  Ulysses,  the  beautiful 


180      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

constancy  of  Penelope,  but  over  against  these  are 
the  suitors  of  Penelope,  mere  drones,  and  the 
dainty  subjects  of  Alcinous,  and  we  are  like  them 
a  mere  number  born  to  consume  the  fruits  of  the 
earth,  busied  more  than  we  should  be  in  pamper- 
ing our  precious  bodies.  Horace  thinks  the 
Homeric  ideal  is  the  true  one. 

Let  me  say  right  here  that  the  reward  of  such 
heroic  achievement  is  rest  and  recreation,  singing 
and  dancing  if  you  please,  pleasure  if  you  please, 
pleasure  to  which  the  sated  Sybarite  can  never 
rise  for  it  comes  as  a  result,  not  as  an  end  sought. 

Let  me  give  you  an  example.  In  the  earlier 
stages  of  this  same  Exodus,  great  faith  and  en- 
durance were  required  of  the  people  from  time  to 
time.  At  the  very  outset  they  came  down  that 
valley  to  the  seaside,  the  enemy  in  pursuit  of 
them ;  and  there  they  were,  the  sea  before  them, 
a  mountain  on  either  hand  and  a  foe  pressing  upon 
them  from  behind.  The  word  from  the  Lord  was 
that  they  go  forward.  Go  forward!  With  those 
seemingly  impassable  barriers  !  Yet  forward  they 
must  go,  and  as  they  did  so,  the  barriers  were 
taken  away,  they  walked  through  the  sea,  and 
when  the  enemy  followed  them,  they  were  over- 
whelmed by  the  refluent  waters, — that  was  a  time 
of  gladness  and  of  song;  and  so  we  have  it  in  the 
record;  then  sang  Moses  and  the  children  of 
Israel,  this  song  unto  the  Lord  and  spoke,  say- 
ing: "I  will  sing  unto  the  Lord  for  he  has  tri- 
umphed gloriously,  the  horse  and  his  rider  hath 


NOISE  OF  THEM  THAT  SING      181 

he  thrown  into  the  sea" — there  is  a  song  for  you. 
And  Miriam,  the  sister  of  Aaron,  took  a  timbrel 
in  her  hand  and  all  the  women  went  out  after  her 
with  timbrels  and  with  dances — there  is  dancing 
for  you. 

Talk  of  pleasure !  who  can  tell  the  exquisite  de- 
light that  thrilled  the  people  on  the  occasion  of  so 
signal  an  achievement? 

Legitimate  activity  whets  the  appetite  for  that 
pleasure  which  comes  as  a  reward.  The  very 
activity  is  pleasure  for  that  matter,  the  more 
keenly  felt  as  the  pulse  beats  strong  with  exercise, 
and  the  faculties  are  alert  and  attuned  to  the  play 
of  helpful  emotion.  The  wearied  votary  of  pleas- 
ure is  a  stranger  to  that  fresh  and  buoyant  joy. 

I  spoke  of  shrinking  from  burdens  of  thought. 
That  opens  another  aspect  of  our  subject.  It  is 
pitiful  to  note  that  intellectual  and  moral  flabbi- 
ness  which  shrinks  from  the  task  of  answering 
life's  questions,  because  the  answer  isn't  at  once 
forthcoming.  We  cannot  prove  on  the  instant 
that  the  soul  is  immortal,  we  cannot  demonstrate, 
in  the  scientific  sense  of  demonstration,  that  there 
is  a  God.  We  have  our  instincts,  our  intuitions 
and  even  our  reasons,  but  these  do  not  pass  in  the 
laboratories  of  science. 

Now  if  a  youth  is  unfortunate  enough  to  come 
into  doubt  upon  these  or  similar  questions,  you 
may  not  bring  him  conviction  by  quoting  a  text 
to  him  or  by  tripping  through  the  forms  of  logic, 
or  in  his  own  case  by  any  special  siege  of  close 


182      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

and  hard  thinking.  Such  problems  have  to  be 
lived  with.  They  are  solved  only  by  working 
them  out  and  living  them  out.  Obedience,  with 
reference  to  these  great  doctrines  of  revelation,  is 
the  true  solvent  of  incertitude.  "If  any  man  will 
do  his  will  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine  whether 
it  be  of  God." 

Our  best  answer  to  life's  problems  come  with 
life's  last  crown.  The  heritage  of  gray  hairs, 
what  Lowell  calls  "that  autumnal  wisdom  ripe  and 
placid,"  is  this  very  certitude  upon  matters  which 
have  been  the  lifelong  questionings  of  the  heart, 
a  certitude  which  may  still  be  confirmed  by  our  last 
experiences  and  best  insights. 

But  if  a  youth  winces  under  such  burdens  of 
thought,  and  wants  to  throw  them  off,  if  at  his 
first  defeat  when  thought  is  baffled,  as  it  surely 
will  be,  he  gives  up,  or  takes  up  the  easiest  theory 
which  presents  itself  as  an  alternative,  that  is  bad. 
A  very  large  share  of  the  unbelief  of  men  repre- 
sents the  cheap  despair  into  which  they  sink  when 
they  realize  the  difficulty  of  these  problems,  and 
they  stray  off  after  other  gods  or  glide  into  an 
easy  indifference.  How  many  men  are  simply  in- 
different upon  these  subjects  because  they  can  not 
immediately  answer  all  the  hard  questions  that 
arise  in  connection  with  them. 

That  is  what  happened  here  in  this  narrative. 
Moses  delayed  his  return,  that  is  all.  It  was  only 
a  period  of  waiting,  and  those  people  should  have 
been  capable  of  that  much  faith  in  their  leader, 


NOISE  OF  THEM  THAT  SING      183 

if  not  in  the  God  he  represented.  But  no !  before 
many  days  they  gathered  themselves  together 
unto  Aaron  and  said  unto  him :  "Up !  make  us 
Gods  who  shall  go  before  us."  "As  for  this 
Moses,  the  man  who  brought  us  up  out  of  the  land 
of  Egypt,  we  wot  not  wThat  has  become  of  him." 

Then  came  the  earrings  and  then  the  golden 
calf.  Any  little  visible  thing  would  do  for  them 
to  worship,  so  incapable  were  they  of  grasping  and 
holding  to  a  spiritual  truth.  And  the  words  of 
God  to  Moses  were :  "They  have  corrupted  them- 
selves, they  have  turned  aside  quickly  out  of  the 
way  which  I  have  commanded  them,"  and  the  form 
which  their  lapse  took  was  idolatry  and  feasting 
and  levity.  "They  sat  down  to  eat  and  drink 
and  rose  up  to  play." 

Now  I  can  anticipate  your  criticism  upon  this 
line  of  thought — that  life  in  this  aspect  of  it  is 
too  forbidding,  too  severe  and  hard,  unrelieved  by 
mirth  and  pleasure.  This  world  of  ours  is  al- 
ready too  somber,  there  is  so  much  suffering, 
wrong,  evil,  so  much  hardship,  a  good  deal  of 
darkness,  and  that  we  ought  to  let  in  all  the  light, 
all  the  relief,  all  the  joy  that  we  can.  I  know 
how  true  that  is,  and  would  add  to,  rather  than 
subtract  from,  any  real  relief  and  help  that  man 
and  woman  can  get  in  bearing  their  burdens. 

I  see  plainly  how  blessed  a  gift  it  is  to  be  able 
to  endure  all  things  with  a  cheerful  and  hopeful 
heart.  But  we  must  beware  lest  good  cheer  alone 
become  our  main  purpose.  We  want  so  many 


184      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

easements  of  toil ;  there  is  such  a  passion  for  fun 
and  hilarity, — the  ease  of  it,  the  lightness  and  ex- 
hilaration of  it.  The  people  are  so  fond  of 
parades  and  masquerades  and  trivial  diversions. 
If  the  world's  work  were  done  then  we  might  set- 
tle down  to  enjoyment,  fatal  as  that  course  would 
be  to  our  true  happiness ;  but  the  world's  work 
seems  only  begun.  It  is  precisely  because  there 
is  so  much  hardship,  so  much  suffering,  so  many 
evils,  such  troops  of  black  horses,  on  mountains 
of  brass,  because  the  kingdom  of  God  is  yet  so 
far  away  from  us  that  the  serious  business  of  life 
should  take  a  deep  hold  upon  us. 

I  wonder  sometimes  what  service  they  render 
in  the  providence  of  God,  whose  lives  are  devoted 
to  pleasure,  sipping  here  and  there  the  sweets  of 
diversion,  flitting  from  scene  to  scene  of  gayety, 
with  barely  intervals  enough  to  repair  their 
shaken  nerves  or  refresh  their  sated  appetites. 
Relief,  indeed!  It  is  often  a  relief  to  such  when 
there  comes  an  enforced  period  of  quiet  and  absti- 
nence. I  am  convinced  that  in  fashionable  circles 
there  is  a  powerful  motive  for  the  outward  observ- 
ance of  Lent  in  the  sheer  weariness  of  pleasure- 
seekers  at  that  season,  and  that  they  may  be  re- 
freshed and  ready  for  a  new  plunge  when  the 
days  of  abstinence  are  over;  and  that  is  one  of 
the  reasons  why  Lent  is  becoming  an  institution 
of  society  as  well  as  an  institution  of  the  church. 

It  would  seem  the  manly  thing  to  contend  for 
that  nobler  type  of  living  that  asks  no  questions 


NOISE  OF  THEM  THAT  SING      185 

about  pleasure — that  sets  the  face  against  it,  if 
need  be,  in  the  firm  pursuit  of  duty,  pushing  the 
legitimate  enterprises  of  life  toward  accomplish- 
ment at  whatever  cost.  Not  that  we  are  to  banish 
all  thought  of  reward;  not  that  our  reward  shall 
be  joyless.  Indeed,  there  was  joy  in  the  motive 
of  the  Master  himself,  "Who  for  the  joy  that  was 
set  before  him  endured  the  cross  despising  the 
shame" — not  a  selfish  pleasure,  but  the  joy  of 
doing  the  work  and  being  able  to  say,  "it  is 
finished." 

I  want  to  assure  you  again  and  again  that  the 
rewards  will  take  care  of  themselves  in  any  career 
that  is  actuated  by  noble  purposes,  and  that  is 
pursued  with  unflinching  fidelity,  and  every  good 
cause  must  be  wrought  to  its  success  in  that  way, 
if  our  world  is  to  be  made  better.  Somebody 
must  work,  somebody  must  suffer,  somebody  must 
wait  in  apparent  disappointment. 

Think  what  is  being  done  and  how  strong  and 
noble  natures  are  waiting  in  the  cause  of  temper- 
ance !  To  prevent  cruelty  to  animals,  e.  g.,  what 
thankless  labors  through  a  whole  generation  to 
work  up  a  public  sentiment  to  get  suitable  laws 
passed  and  to  get  the  means  of  enforcing  them? 
What  opposition  Mr.  Bergh  met,  what  buffetings, 
what  sneers !  never  faltering,  however.  It  would 
have  been  easier  to  relax  the  fiber  of  that  purpose 
and  drift  along  with  the  world  in  indifference  to 
suffering,  but  would  the  pleasure  of  such  ease 
have  been  at  all  comparable  to  the  profound  satis- 


186      HUMANITIES  IN  EDUCATION 

faction  of  accomplishing  so  noble  a  purpose,  and 
having  the  people  whose  hearts  were  made  more 
tender  by  his  ministry,  rise  up  at  last  and  call 
him  blessed? 

Enterprises  that  enlist  the  affections  and  nobler 
human  sentiments  are  sure  of  their  reward  in 
terms  of  satisfaction  as  profound  and  noble  as 
are  the  sentiments  themselves.  There  is  a  mag- 
nificent service  in  simple  waiting.  I  wonder  if 
that  is  not  what  is  meant  by  "Waiting  on  the 
Lord."  To  wait  on  is  to  serve,  primary  to  rest 
in  expectation  and  hope.  "They  that  wait 
on  the  Lord  shall  renew  their  strength."  As  the 
father  waits  for  the  return  of  the  prodigal  with 
misgivings  of  course,  with  fear,  yet  waiting,  for 
at  the  first  indication  of  his  coming,  when 
he  is  yet  a  great  way  off,  the  father  is  ready  to 
go  and  meet  him,  to  fall  on  his  neck  and  kiss 
him. 

Or  as  the  mother  waits  for  the  return  of  her 
roving  sailor  lad, — with  a  heavy  heart  at  times 
it  may  be,  but  with  a  tenderness  of  longing  that 
begets  hope.  She  may  grow  pale  and  thin  in 
waiting,  but  her  keen  eye  never  wearies,  never 
does  she  lift  it  from  the  curved  shore  and  the 
horizon  over  which  his  mast  may  climb,  and  though 
a  thousand  times  she  may  fail  to  see  him,  every 
disappointment  is  the  birth  of  a  new  hope.  And 
if  the  good  ship  ever  does  come  over  the  horizon, 
— if  she  ever  does  hold  him  to  her  heart  in  a  lov- 
ing embrace,  there  is  not  a  thrill  of  joy  she  feels, 


NOISE  OF  THEM  THAT  SING      187 

but  she  has  felt  it  a  thousand  times  by  anticipa- 
tion. 

We  cheapen  life's  true  joys,  we  weaken  life's 
true  forces,  if  we  are  content  with  the  superficial 
pleasures  which  appeal  to  our  senses. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 
LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


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